I     :  ' 


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SOCIALISM 


AND   THE 


ETHICS    OF   JESUS 


BY 


HENRY   C.   VEDDER 

PROFESSOR   OF   CHURCH    HISTORY   IN   CR02ER 
THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


Nfto  gork 

THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

1914 

Ali  rights  res*rv*d 


I  a  •  •  • 

,*  . 

•  •  • 

•  '  •  •  :• 


Copyright,  1912, 
Bv  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  January,  1912.     Reprinted 
September,  1912  ;  April,  1914. 


Nortoooli  ?3«ss 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


VSls 


r- 

AH   LOVE  !    COULD   THOU   AND   I   WITH   FATE   CONSPIRE 
2:  TO   GRASP   THIS   SORRY   SCHEME  OF   THINGS   ENTIRE, 

WOULD   WE   NOT   SHATTER   IT   TO   BITS  —  AND   THEN 
REMOULD   IT   NEARER   TO   THE   HEART'S   DESIRE  ! 


CO 

OS 

2 

◦ 

c 

(9 


431C98 


CONTENTS 

BY  WAY   OF   INTRODUCTION 

PAGES 

Scope  of  the  inquiry  —  Socialism  a  philosophy  —  Socialism 
has  no  programme  —  A  goal  —  Socialism  not  com- 
munism—  Not  anarchy  —  Vagaries  of  socialists  —  Violence 
unnecessary      .         .        •         .        .         .        .        .         •     ^'9 

CHAPTER   I 

SOCIALISM   IN   THE   TIME   OF   THE   REFORMATION 

First  socialist  groups  —  Not  all  Anabaptists  socialists  —  Non-  ^/ 

resistance  —  Peasants  not  socialistic  —  Socialism  in 
Moravia  —  Chiliasm  —  First  community  at  Austerlitz  — 
Prosperity  —  Organization  —  All  things  in  common  — 
Dissensions  —  Intolerant  spirit  —  Jacob  Huter  —  Com- 
munities extinguished  —  Difficulties  of  a  programme  — 
Wanted  :  a  new  man  —  Economic  feasibility  of  Socialism 

—  Spiritual  barrenness  —  Life  more  than  wealth  —  Ne- 
cessity of  leisure  —  Is  Socialism  compatible  with  culture  ?    11-32 

CHAPTER   II 

THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   MODERN   SOCIALISM   IN  FRANCE 

A  philosophy  of  history  —  Slavery  —  Feudalism  —  Serfdom  — 
Capitalism  —  The  Revolution  —  Class  struggles  —  Indi- 
vidualism—  A  political  delusion  —  "Free"  yet  a  slave  — 
A  ballot  but  no  bread  —  All  should  work  —  Pure  individual- 
ism impossible  —  Steps  of  social  progress  —  Laissez  faire 

—  Rapid  advance  of  capitalism  —  Effect  on  class  forma- 
tion —  No  escape  for  the  poor  —  Competition  and  capital- 

vii 


vm  CONTENTS 


PAGES 


ism  —  Competition  and  the  laborer — The  worker  and  his 
"freedom"  — Value  of  the  Union  —  Growth  of  the  Trust 

—  Hypocrisy  of  capitalism  —  Capitalism  necessary  —  Ob- 
ject of  Socialism  — Liberty  for  all  —The  new  privilege  — 
Saint-Simon  —  Opposes  Revolution  — His  ideal  —  A  cru- 
cial test  —  Socialism  and  Democracy  —  Collectivism  — 
Private  property  retained  —  The  new  Christianity  —  Fourier 

—  His  pathetic  faith  —  Harmony  —  The  Phalanx  —  Theory 
of  labor  —  Results  expected  —  The  arts  of  living  —  Elimi- 
nation of  waste  —  An  object  lesson  —  Private  property 
permitted  —  The  Guise  community  —  Fourier's  influence 

—  Louis  Blanc  —  His  primary  ideas  —  "  Social  workshops  " 

—  Pay  of  workers  —  An  unsolved  problem  —  Relation  of 
wealth  to  morals  —  Unfortunate  experiments  —  Socialism 
and  politicians  —  Utopianism  —  Marriage  —  Jules  Gu^sde 

—  Jaur^s 33-71 


CHAPTER   HI 

LASSALLE:     THE   FIRST   STAGE   OF   GERMAN   SOCIALISM 

The  two  founders  —  Contrasted  characters  —  Lassalle  and 
Bismarck  —  Birth  and  training  — Writings —The  Hatz- 
field  case  —  Two  great  careers  —  Lassalle's  work  —  "  The 
working-men's  programme  "  —  "  An  open  letter  "  —  The 
Frankfort  speech  —  The  working-men's  union  —  Lassalle's 
death  —  Character  —  A  revolution  demanded  —  "  The  iron 
law  of  wages  "  — Ricardo's  fallacy  —  An  automatic  regu- 
lation—  The  "law''  only  a  historical  generalization  — 
Wants  essential  to  progress  —  Not  an  "iron"  law,  but 
elastic  —  Lassalle's  oratory  —  His  programme  and  Louis 
Blanc's  —  No  real  solution  —  Liebkneckt  —  Bebel  —  His 
atheism  —  Source  of  error  —  Socialism  and  marriage  — 
Governments  roused  —  Bismarck's  repressive  measures  — 
His  socialistic  legislation  —  Results  —  State  Socialism  in 
Germany:    railways  —  Telegraphs  and  telephones — Mu' 


CONTENTS  IX 

PAGES 

nicipal  Socialism  —  Legal  restrictions  —  Strength  of  Social 
Democrats  —  Their  propaganda  —  The  Revisionists  — 
Industrial  progress  —  A  political  lesson  —  The  American's 
advantage 7S-I0S 

CHAPTER   IV 


Marx's  early  years  —  Friendship  with  Engels  —  Founds  the 
International — His  philosophy  of  history — "Das  Kapital" 

—  Its  affected  profundity  —  False  idea  of  wealth  —  Doc- 
trine of  value  —  A  self-contradiction  —  Does  not  apply  to 
land  —  Contradicts  experience  —  "  Proofs  "'  that  prove 
nothing  —  The  modified  formula  —  Important  factors 
neglected  —  A  false  distinction  —  Cost  of  production  — 
The  common  denominator  —  What  is  "labor"'?  —  Does 
Marx  recognize  mental  labor  ?  —  Marxians  desert  Marx  — 
"  Surplus  "  value  —  Simply  profit  —  Factors  Marx  neglects 

—  Superintendence  —  An  impracticable  principle  —  What 
constitutes  "exploiting"?  —  Other  errors  —  Chiefly  an 
agitator  —  Ignores  the  agrarian  problem  —  The  single  tax 

—  Basis  of  Socialism  ethical  —  Marx's  real  service — The 
class  struggle  —  Marx's  originality  —  Adam  Smith  — 
Marxian  Sociahsm  dogmatic,  not  scientific      .         .      107-142 

CHAPTER   V 

ANARCHY:     THE   SCHOOL   OF   PROUDHON  AND   KROPOTKIN 

Proudhon's  writings  —  Fundamental  ideas  —  Property  is  rob- 
bery—  Abolition  of  capital  —  His  National  Bank  —  Abo- 
lition of  government  —  Abandonment  of  Utopias  — 
Profoundly  religious  —  Anarchy  a  goal  —  Bakunin  —  "  God 
and  the  State"  —  His  collectivism —- Kropotkin —  " Con- 
quest of  Bread"  —  Anarchistic  communism  —  Economic 
possibility  of  anarchy  —  "The  sacred  right  of  insurrec- 


X  CONTENTS 

PAGES 

tion  "  —  A  new  science  of  economics  —  Tolstoi  —  His  writ- 
ings —  A  crisis  —  Turns  to  religion  —  The  "  master  word  " 
of  Jesus  —  Economic  teachings  —  Opposes  money  — 
Problems  of  anarchy  —  Philosophical  anarchists —  A  falla- 
cious assumption  —  True  democracy  and  spurious  —  Nihil- 
ism —  Terrorism  a  failure  —  The  outbreak  of  1905  — 
Anarchy  of  the  deed  —  Wanton  crimes  —  The  Haymarket 
outrage  —  Weakness  of  anarchy  —  Some  good  features  — 
The  outlook 143-174 

CHAPTER  VI 

SOCIALISM   IN  ENGLAND 

An  unfruitful  soil  —  England  and  capitalism  —  Laws  against 
working-men  —  The  Manchester  economists  —  Their  spe- 
cious "laws"  —  The  Wages  Fund —  Malthus  and  popula- 
tion—  Man  has  no  "rights"  —  Diminishing  returns  — 
Idle  academic  debates  —  Robert  Owen  —  Wretchedness 
of  the  laborer — Inhuman  greed  —  New  Lanarck  —  Re- 
forms introduced  —  Owen's  religion  —  His  social  theories 

—  First  proposal  —  Why  it  failed  —  Influence  on  legisla- 
tion—  Socialistic  experiments  —  Causes  of  failure  —  Mis- 
read human  nature  —  Economic  defects  of  Owen's  schemes 

—  His  later  vagaries  —  "  Reform  "  that  did  not  reform  — 
Chartism  and  the  Charter  —  Extravagant  claims  —  "Past 
and  Present "  —  Christian  Socialism  :  Maurice  —  Kingsley 

—  What  was  accomplished  —  Hog-pen  ethics  —  Distribu- 
tion the  chief  problem  —  Ruskin  —  The  making  of  souls 

—  "Unto  this  Last"  —  The  dismal  science  —  Not  wealth 
but  life  —  Practical  proposals  —  Toynbee  Hall  —  Settle- 
ment work  —  A  new  school  —  Social  Democratic  Federa- 
tion —  William  Morris  —  The  socialist  league  —  Bax  — 
Hyndman  —  Blatchford  —  Religious  and  political  here- 
sies —  The  Fabians  —  Keir  Hardie  and  the  Labor  Party 

—  Intolerant   Marxians  —  The   programme  —  The    Taff 


CONTENTS  XI 

PAGES 

Vale  decision  —  Victory  of  1906  —  The  Osborne  case  — 
Legislation  proposed  —  Municipal  Socialism  —  Coopera- 
tion        175-223 

CHAPTER   VII 

SOCIALISM    IN   AMERICA 

Slow  growth  —  Moravian  communities  —  Shakers  —  Rappists 

—  Amana  —  Oneida  —  Common  features  —  New  Harmony 

—  Owen's  failure  —  Brook  Farm  —  Failure  and  lesson  — 
Beginning  of  real  Socialism  —  Theory  versus  practice  — 
Capitalism  nullifies  freedom  —  What  to  do  —  The  real 
anarchist  —  The  teaching  of  history  —  Violence  needless 

—  A  distinct  type  —  What  American  Socialism  proposes 

—  No  Utopias  —  "Charity"'  no  remedy — Social  evils  de- 
mand social  cure  —  The  Trusts  —  The  socialist  view  — 
The  trend  of  development  —  Who  create,  own  —  A  Trust 
disclaimer  —  Divine  Right  of  Capital  —  The  programme  — 
The  referendum,  initiative,  and  recall  —  Direct  taxation  — 
Three  forms  of  tax  proposed  —  Economic  reforms  —  Ethi- 
cal value  of  comfort  —  Factory  reform  —  Professor  Flint's 
objections  —  Poverty  a  social  disease  —  Socialism  and 
democracy  —  Checks  on  the  popular  will  —  The  Supreme 
Court  —  The  Federal  Senate  —  The  House  of  Representa- 
tives—  Mr.  Speaker  —  The  folly  of  Americans  —  Gulli- 
bility of  working-men  —  First  political  efforts  —  Experience 
does  not  teach  —  Cause  of  failure  —  Capitalism  dreads  the 
ballot  —  The  Henry  George  campaign  —  Recent  progress 

—  Other  criteria  of  progress  —  Attitude  of  the  farmers  — 
The  outlook 225-268 

CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   IDEALS  OF   SOCIALISM  —  ARE   THEY    PRACTICABLE? 

Social    discontent  —  Civilization  —  Capitalism  —  Competition 
anti-social — Scientific  production — Competition  and  char- 


Xii  CONTENTS 

PAGES 

acter  —  Poverty  a  necessity  —  Thrift  —  A  broken  reed  — 
Social  significance  of  wealth  —  Two  basic  principles  of 
Socialism  —  The  friend  of  civilization  —  The  Superman  — 
A  mirage  —  Prophecy  —  Revolution  or  evolution — Equal 
and  equitable  —  The  highest  ethics  —  Compensation  — 
The  socialist  point  of  view  —  Socialism  economically 
infeasible  ?  —  Race  suicide  —  The  economic  proof  —  In- 
creased production  —  A  suicidal  policy  —  Scientific  effi- 
ciency—  Instructive   instances  —  Costs  to  be  eliminated 

—  Alleged  superiority  of  private  enterprise  —  A  practical 
test  —  The  problem  of  direction  —  A  suggested  solution 

—  Mr.  Mallock's  objection  —  Greed  not  the  sole  incentive 

—  Other  motives  —  The  creative  impulse  —  Greed  a  sub- 
ordinate motive — The  craving  for  work  —  Invention  — 
Literature  —  Socialism  a  stimulus  —  Advance  of  intelli- 
gence—  Objections  that  neutralize  each  other — Source 
of  political  corruption  —  The  new  aristocracy  —  Socialism 
and  the  higher  callings  —  Effect  on  the  professions  —  Art 

—  Journalism  —  "The  New  Slavery"  —  The  paradox  of 
freedom  —  The  laborer's  "freedom"  —  The  life  of  the 
poor  —  What  Socialism  promises  —  Socialism  and  crime 

—  Vice — Our  drink  bill  —  The  loss  of  life  —  The  error 
of  socialists  —  Prohibition — Socialism  and  the  family  — 
Coming  status  of  women  —  Economic  equality  of  the 
sexes  impossible  —  Social  equality  necessary  —  Effect  on 
marriage  —  Prostitution  —  Divorce  —  Socialism  and  "so- 
ciety"            269-333 

CHAPTER   IX 

THE   SOCIAL   TEACHINGS   OF   JESUS  —  GENERAL   PRINCIPLES 

Need  of  inductive  study  —  True  criticism  and  false  —  Need  of 
sympathetic  study  —  Exegesis  that  misleads  —  Practical 
ethics,  not  scientific  —  Ethics  of  Jesus  grounded  in  religion 

—  Jesus'   conception   of  his    mission  —  Salvation  —  The 


CONTENTS  Xm 

PAGES 

Kingdom  —  Essentially  a  social  gospel  —  The  Good  News 
and  the  individual  —  The  Good  News  and  society  —  The 
synthesis  —  Jesus  and  Privilege  —  A  new  world  —  The 
apocalyptic  element  —  Not  interim  ethics  merely  —  Jesus 
reveals  God  —  A  universal  Father  —  Sonship  —  Brother- 
hood —  Anthropomorphism  —  God's  holy  love  —  Salva- 
tion—  Repentance  —  Faith  —  "Eternal"  life  —  The  New 
Man  —  What  is  a  Christian  ?  —  The  New  Law  —  Its  wide 
scope  —  The  Great  Paradox  —  Not  a  code,  but  a  life  — 
Unconscious  disciples  —  A  reconciliation  —  Nietzsche  — 
Darwinism  that  is  not  Darwinian  —  The  corner-stones 
^—  Jesus   and   Aristotle  —  Righteousness  —  Regeneration 

—  The  social  quality  of  righteousness  —  The  error  of 
Pharisaism  —  Lowering  the  standard  —  The  Golden  Rule 

—  Obedience  impossible  now  —  Jesus  and  the  ethics  of 
Socialism  —  A  unique  method  —  Conversion  —  Wanted: 
a  cure  —  Allies,  not  opponents  —  Socialism  and   religion 

—  Materialism  —  Not  form,  but  spirit        .         .         .      335-386 

CHAPTER  X 

THE   SOCIAL   TEACHINGS   OF  JESUS  —  APPLICATIONS 

Not  Reformer,  but  Revealer  —  Uniqueness  of  method  —  His 
social  ethics  fundamental  —  The  social  unit,  the  family  — 
Marriage  a  divine  institution  —  Rooted  in  human  nature 

—  Not  a  concession  to  weakness  —  Monogamy  —  The 
union  of  spirit  —  Divorce  —  Wrong  exegesis  —  What 
Jesus  forbade  —  His  significant  silence  —  Our  problem  — 
Ethics  not  too  severe  —  Persistence  of  his  ideals  —  The 
modern  divorce  problem  —  The  false  ideal  of  happiness  — 
Effect  on  family  life  —  A  misinterpretation  —  When  one 
must  "  hate  "  —  The  sanity  of  Jesus  —  Slavery  —  Moham- 
med —  Drunkenness  —  What  is  moderation  ?  —  Jesus  and 
wealth  —  Providence  —  "  Be  not  anxious  "  —  Jesus  not 
fanatical  —  His  teaching  interpreted  by  his  conduct  —  The 


xlv  CONTENTS 


PAGES 


law  of  renunciation  —  Wealth  not  owned  —  Stewardship 

—  The  standard  of  wealth  —  Judaism  socialistic  —  The 
narrow  view  of  service  —  The  Middle  Ages  as  an  object 
lesson  —  Giving  as  a  fine  art  —  The  State  —  Non-resist- 
ance—  Bearing  of  the  law  of  love  —  War — Arbitration  — 

An  ideal  of  Socialism  also 387-434 

CHAPTER  XI 

THE   SOCIAL   FAILURE   OF   THE   CHURCH 

An  unrealized  ideal  —  The  Gospels  and  their  social  ethics  — 
Jesus  founded  no  Church  —  Social  ethics  at  Jerusalem  — 
Social    teachings   of    the    Fathers  —  Deacons  —  Bishops 

—  Social  meetings  —  The  vast  change  —  Paul  —  His  di- 
vergence from  Jesus  denied  —  Inspiration  —  "Back  to 
Christ "  —  Jesus  or  Paul  ?  —  Paul's  experience  —  Legalism 

—  The  forgiveness  of  sins  —  Paul's  theologizing  —  Jesus 
and  sin  —  The  historical  fact  —  Theology  above  ethics  — 
The  Fathers  —  Heresy  —  Arianism  —  Eclipse  of  ethics  — 
Paganism  —  Syncretism  —  Effect  on  Christianity  —  Effect 
on  institutions  —  Submergence  of  the  ethics  of  Jesus  — 
Persecution  —  Unity  paramount  —  Constantine  —  The 
transformation  and  the  anomaly — Church  and  State  — 
A  forgotten  mission  —  Disappearance  of  the  Kingdom 
idea  —  Asceticism  —  Monachism  —  Protestantism  also  a 
failure  —  Luther's  spiritual  conflict  —  His  disparagement 
of  ethics  —  The  Anabaptists  —  Calvin's  theology  —  The 
long  neglect  —  The  present  obstacle  —  Are  the  ethics  of 
Jesus  impracticable  ? 435-479 

CHAPTER   XII 

THE  ATTITUDE   OF   CHURCHES   AND   MINISTERS   TO   SOCIAL 

QUESTIONS 

No  Fabian  policy  possible  —  The  problem  —  Mission  of  the 
Church  —  What  is  the  Church  doing?  —  Modern  Phari- 


CONTENTS  XV 

PAGES 

seeism  —  The  Church  and  men  of  wealth  —  Function  of 
the  preacher  —  Is  he  faithful?  —  Religion  imperishable, 
but  not  the  Church —  Socialism  as  a  religion  —  The  Church 
on  trial  —  Regeneration  —  '•  Awake,  thou  that  sleepest "  — 
The  Church's  attitude  —  Opportunism  —  The  practical 
question  —  The  true  ideal  —  Estrangement  of  the  workers 

—  Is  the  Church  misunderstood  ?  —  History  repeating  itself 

—  Estrangement  of  the  thoughtful  —  The  remedy — The 
"old  gospel ''  —  The  lack  of  reality  —  Judged  by  its  fruits 

—  The  struggle  for  social  betterment  —  The  preacher  and 
the  toilers  —  The  Church  and  social  legislation  —  Philan- 
thropy—  Socialism  and  Christianity  —  Agreements  and 
disagreements  —  Allies,  not  enemies  —  The"  peril  and  the 
hope 483-515 


BY   WAY   OF   INTRODUCTION 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Some  general  works  by  socialists :  — 
Kaufmann,  What  is  Socialism?    New  York,  1910. 
Spargo,  Socialism.    New  York,  1906. 
Kelly,  Twentieth  Century  Socialism.     New  York,  1910. 

Critical  but  non-partisan :  — 
KiRKUP,  History  of  Socialism,  4th  ed.    New  York,  1908. 
Graham,  Socialism  New  and  Old,  "International  Scientific  Series," 

1891. 
Stoddart,  The  New  Socialism.    New  York,  1910. 
Skelton,  Socialism :  a  Critical  Analysis.    Boston,  191 1. 

Critical  and  hostile :  — 
ScHAEFFLE, The  Quintessence  of  Socialism,  "Social  Science  Series," 

1908. 
Flint,  Socialism.    New  York,  1895. 

Note.  —  It  would  have  been  easy  greatly  to  extend  these  bibliog- 
raphies, but  it  was  beheved  that  they  would  be  more  helpful  to  the 
largest  number  of  readers,  if  limited  mainly  to  books  of  recent  pub- 
lication, easily  accessible,  and  wholly  limited  to  books  in  the  English 
language. 


BY   WAY   OF   INTRODUCTION 

I  PURPOSE  in  the  following  chapters  to  attempt  three 
things:  first,  to  sketch  briefly  the  history  of  socialis- 
tic principles  and  parties  in  modern  times ;  second,  to 
examine  with  sufficient  thoroughness  the  fundamental 
principles  of  present-day  Socialism ;  third,  to  inquire 
in  what  respects  these  principles  correspond  to  the  ethics 
of  Jesus,  and  wherein  the  two  differ.  I  purpose  to  make 
this  investigation,  not  as  the  champion  of  any  social 
theory,  or  the  briefed  defender  of  any  social  system,  but 
in  as  impartial  and  candid  a  spirit  as  possible,  as  a  stu- 
dent of  history,  of  the  Scriptures,  of  economics,  of  social 
institutions. 

The  critical  examination  of  the  principles  of  Socialism 
will  come  later,  but  at  the  very  outset  of  our  inquiry 
some  definition  of  our  subject-matter  is  highly  desirable. 
There  is  great  mental  confusion  concerning  the  nature 
of  Socialism,  and  we  must  try  to  comprehend  clearly 
just  what  we  are  to  study.  Socialism  is  first  of  all  a 
philosophy,  a  theory  by  which  the  phenomena  of  society 
are  explained.  More  precisely,  it  is  the  philosophy  of 
the  effective  production  and  distribution  of  wealth,  and 
the  results  thereby  produced  on  all  social  institutions. 
Socialism  is  also  a  practical  movement,  intended  to  bring 
about  the  condition  of  things  required  by  the  philosophy. 
We  shall  be  compelled  to  give  our  attention  to  both  these 
phases  of  Sociahsm ;    for  it  is  impossible  to  understand 

3 


4  SOCIALISM  AND    THE   ETHICS    OF  JESUS 

either  theory  or  movement,  unless  they  are  studied  to- 
gether. 

Since  Socialism  is  at  bottom  a  philosophy,  it  has  no 
programme,  properly  speaking.  Some  socialistic  groups 
have  a  programme,  and  in  the  past  socialists  have  quite 
generally  put  forward  programmes  which  we  shall  sub- 
ject in  turn  to  critical  examination  in  the  course  of  our 
study.  But  there  has  been  a  great  change  within  a  gen- 
eration :  intelligent  socialists  no  longer  profess  a  pro- 
gramme. They  have  no  faith  in  the  possibility  of  estab- 
lishing Socialism  to-morrow  or  next  week.  It  is  true 
they  have  a  goal :  a  social  state  in  which  every  person 
shall  contribute  to  the  common  good  in  proportion  to  his 
ability,  and  in  return  shall  be  guaranteed  an  equitable 
share  in  what  is  produced.  But  this  goal  socialists  now 
expect  to  reach  by  a  gradual  process,  not  by  any  sudden 
and  violent  overturning  of  existing  institutions,  or  even 
as  the  immediate  result  of  legislation.  It  is  evolution 
rather  than  revolution  that  is  their  reliance. 

But  the  socialist  holds,  too,  that  evolution  may  be 
hastened  by  intelligent  action.  Because  existing  social 
institutions  are  the  result  of  age-long  process  of  develop- 
ment, of  which  men  have  been  hitherto  mainly  uncon- 
scious, it  by  no  means  follows  that  man  is  the  mere  sport 
of  economic  forces  and  may  do  nothing  to  determine 
his  own  destiny.  Neither  determinism  nor  fatalism  is 
a  necessary  part  of  Socialism.  Man  has  always  done 
something,  he  may  henceforth  do  much  more,  to  direct 
the  line  of  his  development  and  the  evolution  of  social 
institutions.  We  may  steer,  and  not  simply  drift,  toward 
the  ideal  social  order.  Accordingly  Kautsky,  one  of  the 
ablest  of  German  socialist  leaders,  warns  laborers  that 


BY  WAY  OF  INTRODUCTION  5 

they  have  something  to  do  besides  "sit  down  with  open 
mouths  and  wait  for  the  roast  pigeons  to  fly  in."  Just 
as  Burbank,  by  careful  selection  of  seeds  and  plants,  and 
skilful  cross-breeding,  is  able  to  hasten  the  processes  of 
nature  and  produce  in  a  few  months  what  ordinary  evo- 
lution would  require  years,  perhaps  centuries,  to  bring 
forth,  so  the  socialist  believes  that  if  we  can  gain  a  clear 
conception  of  the  goal  to  be  reached,  and  arouse  in  men 
desire  to  reach  it,  the  end  may  be  greatly  hastened. 
Socialism  is  concerned  to-day,  therefore,  not  with  Uto- 
pias, but  with  reahties.  It  is  a  purposeful  attempt  to 
assist  evolution,  not  a  vain  striving  to  shape  society  after 
an  ideal  pattern. 

Sociahsm  might  be  more  scientifically  named  col- 
lecti\'ism.  The  key  to  all  its  theories  and  parties  is, 
cooperative  production  and  equitable  distribution.  It 
is  the  opposite  system  on  the  one  hand  to  individuahsm, 
and  on  the  other  to  competition.  It  is  but  carrying  one 
stage  further  a  process  of  social  reorganization  that  has 
been  transforming  the  world  ever  since  the  decay  of  the 
feudal  system. 

We  have  thus  seen  what  Socialism  is ;  let  us  still  fur- 
ther define  it  by  seeing  what  Socialism  is  not. 

Socialism  is  not  communism,  though  the  two  are  fre- 
quently confounded,  even  in  the  encyclical  of  Pope  Leo 
XIII,  who  misstated  the  essential  principle  of  Socialism 
by  confusing  it  with  Communism.  Of  what  value  is 
infallibility  to  a  pontiff  who  lacks  common  sense,  or  com- 
mon knowledge?  It  must,  however,  be  admitted  that 
socialists  themselves  are  in  large  part  responsible  for 
this  confusion  of  ideas.  There  was  a  time  in  the  move- 
ment when  the  name  "socialist"  did  not  have  its  present 


6  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

precision  of  meaning,  but  was  used  to  describe  persons 
and  movements  that  differed  widely,  and  sometimes  were 
in  sharp  conflict  with  each  other.  To  distinguish  their 
proposals  from  these  ill-defined  Schemes,  when  Karl  Marx 
and  Frederic  Engels  issued  their  famous  declaration  in 
1847,  well  named  ''the  birth-cry  of  modern  Socialism," 
they  called  it  "The  Communist  Manifesto."  Their  ideas 
were  quite  distinct  from  communism,  and  therefore  the 
choice  of  that  name  was  most  unfortunate,  since  it  natu- 
rally tended  to  prolong  misunderstanding  and  confusion. 

The  two  systems  are  easily  distinguishable.  Com- 
munism would  distribute  all  wealth  equally ;  Sociahsm 
would  secure  to  every  man  as  nearly  as  possible  the  full 
product  of  his  own  labor.  Communism  aims  at  the  abo- 
Htion  of  all  private  property ;  Socialism  does  not  object 
to  private  property,  except  ownership  of  the  means  of 
producing  wealth;  these,  it  holds,  should  be  owned  by 
the  whole  community,  and  not  by  individuals  or  small 
groups.  But  wealth  once  produced  and  equitably  dis- 
tributed. Socialism  recognizes  the  right  of  each  person 
to  his  own  portion ;  he  may  consume  it,  or  he  may  accu- 
mulate a  surplus,  or  he  may  give  part  of  it  to  others. 
Socialism  offers  greater  personal  freedom  than  commun- 
ism, therefore,  and  better  opportunity  for  the  main- 
tenance of  family  Hfe.  The  best  examples  of  actual  com- 
munism are  furnished  us  in  some  of  the  religious  orders 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  in  which  the  individual 
does  not  own  even  the  clothes  that  he  wears,  but  every- 
thing belongs  to  the  community. 

Sociahsm  is  not  anarchy,  but  its  antipodes.^    Anarchy 

^  "  Socialism  is  not  Anarchism,  but  order ;  not  Communism,  but  justice ; 
it  does  not  propose  to  abolish  competition,  but  to  regulate  it;   nor  to 


BY  WAY  OF  INTRODUCTION  7 

is  the  extreme  of  individualism,  the  negation  of  all  social 
organization.  It  professes  as  its  goal  that  men  shall  live 
together  without  government  and  without  law.  There 
are  both  evolutionary  and  revolutionary  groups  of  anar- 
chists, both  individualists  and  communists  among  them. 
They  do  not  oppose  collectivism  in  production,  but  hold 
that  it  should  be  voluntary,  like  everything  else.  But 
while  anarchy  would  thus  entirely  free  men  from  law, 
Socialism  would  greatly  extend  the  scope  of  law.  So 
much  is  this  the  characteristic  of  Socialism  that  Herbert 
Spencer  called  it  "the  new  slavery,"  Anarchy  is  a 
centrifugal  force,  Socialism  is  a  centripetal.  Under 
anarchy  a  man  might  work  or  not,  as  he  pleased ;  under 
Socialism  every  man  must  be  an  active  producer,  and 
means  must  be  found  to  persuade  the  um^iUing  and  coerce 
the  lazy.  No  two  systems  could  be  more  thoroughly 
unlike  than  Socialism  and  anarchy,  and  there  is  no  good 
reason  why  they  should  be  so  continually  confounded. 
The  confusion  is  not  always  honest ;  ^  the  words  are  pro- 
miscuously applied  as  epithets  of  opprobrium,  with  so 

abolish  property,  but  to  consecrate  it ;  nor  to  abolish  the  home,  but  to 
make  the  home  possible ;  nor  to  curtail  liberty,  but  to  enlarge  it."  —  Ed- 
mond  Kelly,  p.  7.  "Nor  to  abolish  religion,"  he  might  have  added,  "but 
to  make  it  practical." 

1  The  Republican  platform  for  1908  contained  these  words:  "Social- 
ism would  destroy  wealth;  Republicanism  would  prevent  its  abuse. 
Socialism  would  give  each  an  equal  right  to  take ;  Republicanism  would 
give  to  each  an  equal  right  to  earn.  Socialism  would  offer  an  equality 
of  possessions  which  would  soon  leave  no  one  anything  to  possess;  Re- 
publicanism would  give  equality  of  opportunity  which  would  assure  to 
each  his  share  of  a  constantly  increasing  sum  of  possessions."  The  object 
of  statements  so  notoriously  false  can,  of  course,  be  nothing  else  than  to 
create  political  prejudice  and  influence  voters  against  Socialism.  We 
have  come  to  expect  this  in  political  platforms,  but  it  is  not  seldom  found 
in  what  purports  to  be  the  serious  literature  of  the  subject. 


8  SOCIALISM  AND   THE   ETHICS  OF   JESUS 

much  indifference  and  lack  of  discrimination  as  to  indi- 
cate either  gross  ignorance  or  moral  obliquity  in  those 
who  bandy  the  names  about  so  freely. 

Socialism  should  not  be  confounded,  as  it  often  is, 
with  the  private  and  personal  vagaries  of  some  socialists. 
People  of  widely  differing  opinions  about  art,  science, 
philosophy,  and  religion  have  agreed  in  approving  col- 
lectivism as  the  most  equitable  principle  to  govern  the 
production  and  distribution  of  wealth.  Some  have  been 
atheists,  but  collectivism  has  no  necessary  or  inherent 
connection  with  either  atheism  or  theism.  The  Erfurt 
Congress  (1891)  declared  explicitly  that  religion  is  a 
private  concern  of  the  individual,  with  which  Socialism 
as  such  has  nothing  to  do.  Some  socialists  have  advo- 
cated the  abolition  of  marriage  and  the  family,  but  col- 
lectivism has  no  essential  affinity  for  such  a  theory  of 
social  reorganization.  And  while  some  socialists  would 
substitute  the  ethics  of  the  barnyard  for  the  ethics  of 
Jesus,  that  is  conspicuously  not  true  of  all  socialists. 
Since  they  are  disagreed  on  this  point,  yet  are  equally 
socialists,  the  only  fair  deduction  is  that  of  a  recent  social- 
istic writer,  "There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  socialistic  view 
of  marriage,  any  more  than  there  is  a  Republican  or 
Democratic  view  of  marriage ;  or  any  more  than  there 
is  a  socialist  view  of  vaccination,  vivisection,  vegetarian- 
ism, or  homeopathy."  ^     Among  the  advocates  of  So- 

1  Spargo,  "Socialism,"  p.  293.  In  spite  of  numerous  disclaimers  of 
this  kind  from  recognized  authorities,  the  London  Municipal  Society  in 
its  book  called  "The  Case  Against  Socialism"  makes  a  deliberate  attempt 
to  discredit  Socialism  by  arguing  that  all  socialists  are  violent  revolu- 
tionists (in  the  teeth  of  protests  by  leading  socialists  that  they  neither 
seek  nor  desire  revolution) ;  and  that  Socialism  is  the  necessary  and  de- 
termined foe  of  marriage  and  the  family,  as  well  as  of  all  religion,  espe- 


BY  WAY  OF  INTRODUCTION  9 

cialism  are  many  orthodox  Christians,  and  many  others 
who,  without  being  orthodox,  are  not  at  all  disposed  to 
surrender  marriage  and  the  family  as  effete  institutions. 

Too  many  Protestants  are  ready  to  define  Socialism^ 
as  the  Pope  has  defined  Modernism,  as  ''the  synthesis  of 
all  errors."  This  frame  of  mind  makes  the  pursuit  of 
truth  impossible.  No  helpful  discussion  can  be  con- 
ducted, still  less  can  any  helpful  investigation  be  pursued, 
in  this  spirit  of  wilful  or  ignorant  confounding  of  things 
that  differ.  Let  us  clearly  comprehend,  therefore,  at 
the  very  outset  of  this  inquiry,  that  collectivism  is  essen- 
tially an  economic  theory,  with  certain  limited  but  im- 
portant social  and  ethical  imphcations,  but  that  it  has  no 
direct  connection  with  purely  religious  or  ethical  ideas  and 
institutions.  In  particular,  Socialism  does  not  imply  as- 
sassination, though  it  is  true  that  some  impatient  profes- 
sors of  socialist  ideas  have  betaken  themselves  to  the  bomb 
and  the  dagger.  Of  course,  the  sociahst  reserves  the  right, 
common  to  all  men  and  asserted  by  all  as  an  inalienable 
privilege  of  mankind,  in  the  last  resort  to  rebel  against 
existing  government  and  use  whatever  force  may  be  nec- 
essary to  establish  a  new  order.  But  the  right  of  revo- 
lution is  in  no  sense  a  doctrine  peculiar  to  Socialism. 

He  who  cannot  or  will  not  get  the  point  of  view  that 
has  been  thus  indicated,  will  waste  his  time  and  but  add 
to  his  mental  fog  by  further  attending  to  the  subject. 

cially  of  Christianity.  The  book  is  manifestly  published  in  the  interest  of 
the  Tory  landowners;  and  its  bitterness  and  mendacity  may  be  taken 
to  be  a  good  measure  of  the  present  spread  of  Socialism  in  England,  and 
its  menace  against  the  time-dishonored  rule  of  a  class  whose  political  and 
social  dominance  is  founded  on  the  fact  that  while  numbering  one-tenth 
of  the  people  they  own  nine-tenths  of  all  the  land  in  Great  Britain.  The 
landowners  are  certainly  badly  frightened. 


SOCIALISM   IN   THE  TIME   OF  THE 
REFORMATION 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  literature  of  this  subject  in  Enghsh  is  very  scanty. 
Kautsky,  Communism  in  Central  Europe  in  the  Time  of  the 

Reformation.     London,  1897. 
Bax,  Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Anabaptists.    London,  1903. 
Heath,  Anabaptism.    London,  1895. 


SOCIALISM    IN    THE    TIME    OF    THE    REFORMATION 


It  is  during  the  early  years  of  the  Reformation  that 
the  first  groups  of  sociaHsts,  in  the  modern  sense,  are 
found.  The  distinctive  feature  of  these  new  groups  was 
that  they  proposed  what  was  then  a  novel  principle  to 
govern  the  ownership  of  property  and  the  production 
of  wealth.  They  announced  as  their  basis  of  social  or- 
ganization what  has  since  been  named  collectivism.  The 
soil,  tools,  and  other  means  for  the  production  of  wealth 
were  to  be  owned  by  the  community  as  a  whole,  not  by 
individuals,  and  the  product  of  the  common  industry  was 
to  be  shared  equally  by  all.  As  the  development  of 
these  groups  coincided  with  the  Reformation,  it  is  not 
surprising  to  find  these  economic  and  social  ideas  com- 
bined with  religion.  The  men  who  proposed  this  new 
social  order  were  men  who  desired  religious  liberty  also, 
and  had  thrown  off  allegiance  to  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  They  had  studied  the  Scriptures  diligently,  if 
not  wisely,  and  they  had  become  convinced  that  their 
proposed  social  order  was  in  conformity,  not  only  to 
sound  economic  principles  and  natural  equity,  but  to 
the  teachings  of  Jesus  and  the  life  of  the  primitive 
Church.  We  need  not  pause  here  to  inquire  if  this  con- 
viction were  well  founded,  since  inquiry  into  that  matter 
is  provided  for  in  a  later  chapter.     It  is  at  present  im- 

13 


14  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

portant  only  to  note  that  this  was  an  honest  and  earnest 
religious  belief  of  these  people. 

These  socialistic  groups  are  generally  called  Ana- 
baptists in  the  literature  of  the  period,  a  name  not  at 
all  descriptive  of  them  as  collectivists,  and  often  in- 
accurate as  a  designation  of  their  religious  affiliations. 
That  is  to  say,  not  all  those  composing  these  socialistic 
groups  were  Anabaptists,  though  probably  members  of 
that  religious  party  were  more  numerous  than  any  others 
among  socialists.  Nor  is  the  inference  that  some  have 
drawn  warranted,  namely,  that  most  Anabaptists  of 
the  period  were  socialists.  Some  of  the  most  influential 
men  among  the  Anabaptists  did  not  sympathize  with 
this  collectivist  experiment,  and  gave  it  no  support. 

In  the  earlier  stages  of  their  movement,  so  far  as  the 
Anabaptists  avowed  any  social  principles,  they  were 
inclined  rather  to  communism  than  to  Socialism.  They 
were  impelled  to  communism  by  their  ideal  of  Christian 
brotherly  love,  and  by  the  example  of  the  Church  at 
Jerusalem.  It  was  supposed  that  this  example  of  the 
Jerusalem  saints  laid  an  obligation  on  all  Christians  to 
go  and  do  likewise  —  that  among  true  Christians  all 
things  must  be  held  in  common,  to  the  extent  at  least 
that  every  brother  must  use  his  possessions  for  the 
advancement  of  the  common  Cause  and  the  relief  of 
the  more  needy  brother.  Some  went  so  far  as  to  say 
that  the  law  of  brotherly  love  forbade  any  Christian  to 
be  rich.  But  there  were  many  among  the  Anabaptists, 
demonstrably  some  of  their  ablest  leaders,  who  did  not 
take  this  view  of  the  case.  The  example  of  a  single 
group  of  believers  in  the  apostolic  age,  in  a  peculiar 
emergency,  was  not  believed  to  be  sufi&cient  to  impose 


SOCIALISM   AXD   THE  REFORMATION  15 

a  universal  obligation.  And  so  we  find  in  most  of  the 
Anabaptist  literature  now  extant,  either  silence  on  this 
subject  or  opposition  to  communism.^ 

What  is  more  certainly  known  is,  that  many  of  the 
Anabaptist  groups  held  the  doctrine  of  non-resistance 
later  advocated  by  the  Friends.  The  Anabaptists  were 
more  thoroughgoing  in  their  logical  deductions  than  the 
Friends,  however,  for  they  held  that  Christ's  prohibition 
of  violence  included  more  than  the  use  of  force  to  resist 
personal  injury,  or  the  collective  force  of  war  —  that  it 
also  included  all  civil  government,  which  rests  on  force. 
They  differed  from  the  interpretation  of  Tolstoi,  in  that 
they  conceded  that  "the  powers  that  be  are  ordained 
of  God,"  but  for  the  world,  to  be  administered  by  the 
worldly.  In  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  "Resist  not  the 
evil  man"  is  to  be  hterally  obeyed.  Among  the  saints 
there  is  no  more  place  for  policeman  and  judge  than 
for  the  soldier,  because  no  force  is  to  be  used  to 
repel  evil,  and  punishment  of  the  evil-doer  is  to  be 
left  to  God.  As  there  should  be  no  courts,  there  is 
no  need  of  oaths,  and  so  "Swear  not  at  all"  is  to  be 
literally  obeyed.  Consequently,  the  Anabaptists  con- 
sistently forlDade  a  Christian  man  to  be  a  magistrate, 
or  to  seek  protection  or  redress  through  the  law ;  while 
the  Friends,  less  consistently,  accepted  the  protection 
of  the  law,  even  while  refusing  to  obey  it.  In  these 
doctrines  certain  Anabaptists  anticipated  modern  an- 
archy, rather  than  modern  Socialism. 

'  The  Schleithcim  Confession  is  silent  about  community  of  goods,  and 
so  are  the  other  fragmentary  statements  of  belief  in  Beck's  Geschichts- 
hiicher.  The  extant  writings  of  Denck,  Grebel,  and  other  leaders  are 
equally  silent,  and  when  Hubmaier  was  charged  with  advocating  com- 
munity of  goods,  he  indignantly  denied  the  accusation. 


1 6  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

It  is  also  an  error  to  look  for  Socialism,  as  some  recent 
writers  have  done,  in  the  efforts  of  the  peasant  class  to 
better  their  lot,  culminating  in  the  armed  insurrection  of 
1525,  known  as  the  Peasants'  War.  The  Twelve  Articles 
set  forth  the  ideals,  as  well  as  the  practical  demands,  of 
the  peasants'  movement,  and  prove  beyond  a  doubt 
that  it  had  an  agrarian  basis  rather  than  a  socialistic. 
The  one  article  that  has  any  apparent  socialistic  quality 
is  the  demand  that  the  lords  restore  to  the  people  those 
lands  that  were  once  common,  but  had  been  appropriated 
by  force  or  fraud  to  private  use,  without  color  of  either 
law  or  equity.  These  common  lands  were  meadows 
for  grazing  cattle  and  woodlands,  and  their  restoration 
would  not  have  advanced  a  particle  any  scheme  for  so- 
cialized production.  Temporary  communism  may  be 
found  in  the  peasant  insurrection,  as  at  Miihlhausen 
during  the  brief  domination  of  Thomas  Miinzer,  but  no 
hint  of  true  Socialism.  The  same  is  true  of  the  Ana- 
baptist attempt  to  set  up  the  new  kingdom  of  Christ  at 
Miinster  —  communism,  extending  even  to  community 
of  wives,  may  be  found  there,  but  no  Sociahsm. 

II 

The  first  truly  socialistic  groups  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury are  found  in  Moravia,  and  their  history  begins  with 
the  coming  to  Nikolsberg  of  one  Jacob  Widemann,  about 
the  year  1526.  This  man,  popularly  known  as  "One- 
eyed  Jacob,"  is  said  to  have  been  a  native  of  Ens,  in 
Salzburg,  and  he  had  acquired  some  fame  as  a  preacher 
among  the  Anabaptists  before  coming  to  Nikolsberg. 
Here  a  large  number  of  the  sect  had  found  refuge,  owing 
to  the  fact  that  the  lords  of  the  region,  the  Counts  Lich- 


SOCIALISM    AND   THE   REFORMATION  1 7 

tenstein,  were  of  a  mild  and  tolerant  disposition.  They 
showed  much  favor  to  the  Anabaptists,  and  at  length 
themselves  joined  the  sect.  It  is  probable  that  the  Nikols- 
berg  Anabaptists  were  not  homogeneous  from  the  first, 
but  with  the  coming  of  Widemann  a  party  developed  that 
held  strongly  to  community  of  goods  as  an  essential  tenet 
of  the  Christian  faith.  Widemann  became  the  leader  of 
this  party,  and  in  addition  taught  that,  as  non-resistants, 
Christians  should  not  pay  taxes,  since  money  thus  obtained 
is  used  for  the  support  of  governments  and  the  waging  of 
war.     Taxes  therefore  were  "blood  money,"  he  said. 

Not  long  after  Widemann  came  another  Anabaptist 
leader,  named  Hans  Hut,  a  wilder  fanatic  than  the  former. 
He  was  possessed  with  the  chiliastic  notions  then  rife, 
beheving  himself  to  be  a  prophet  and  his  mission  to  be 
the  leading  of  God's  people  in  the  immediate  and  violent 
establishing  of  the  kingdom.  The  time  was  at  hand  when 
it  would  be  the  duty  of  all  good  Christians  to  take  up  the 
sword  and  smite  the  ungodly  hip  and  thigh.  Even  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  in  the  midst  of  an  intelligent 
community,  with  schools,  academies,  and  colleges,  with 
a  free  press  and  a  free  pulpit,  chiliastic  ideas  at  one  time 
spread  like  wildfire  and  swept  even  educated  men  off 
their  feet ;  we  need  not  be  surprised,  then,  that  they  found 
ready  acceptance  among  an  ignorant  people  in  the  six- 
teenth century.  Hut  and  Widemann,  notwithstanding 
some  contradiction  in  their  teachings,  seem  to  have  joined 
forces,  and  their  followers  became  a  serious  menace  to 
peace  and  good  order  in  Nikolsberg.  So  much  was  this 
the  case,  that  Hut  was  arrested  and  imprisoned  for  a  time 
in  the  castle  of  Count  Lichtenstein,  from  which  he  made 
his  escape  and  was  no  more  heard  of  in  Moravia. 


l8  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

With  the  departure  of  Hut,  Widemann  returned  to 
his  more  moderate  advocacy  of  communism  and  non- 
resistance.  For  a  time  the  greatest  preacher  of  the  Ana- 
baptist movement,  Balthazar  Hubmaier,  together  with 
the  more  sober  of  the  sect,  made  a  successful  opposition, 
and  the  cause  was  on  the  wane  when  the  Austrian  gov- 
ernment caused  the  arrest  of  Hubmaier  and  soon  after 
put  him  to  death ;  after  which  there  was  no  able  leader 
left  to  oppose  the  radicals.  Widemann  and  his  party 
now  waxed  in  numbers  and  influence,  and  finally  became 
so  obnoxious  that  Count  Lichtenstein  required  them 
either  to  cease  their  disturbance  or  leave  his  domains. 
Having  heard  of  a  possible  refuge  elsewhere,  they  chose 
the  latter  alternative  and  emigrated  northward  to  the 
vicinity  of  Austerlitz.  The  territorial  lords  here,  the 
brothers  von  Kaunitz,  welcomed  them  with  a  great 
show  of  favor,  even  sending  wagons  to  assist  in  the 
transportation  of  their  goods.  Sites  for  houses  were 
assigned  them,  materials  were  advanced  for  building, 
and  they  were  permitted  to  order  their  life  as  they 
pleased. 

The  principles  avowed  by  the  party  hitherto  seem 
purely  communistic,  but  the  new  community  was  estab- 
lished on  a  socialistic  basis.  The  chief  occupations  were 
at  first  agricultural,  and  the  soil  was  the  prime  source  of 
wealth.  But  some  of  the  members  had  come  from  the 
towns  and  had  learned  trades ;  they  were  set  at  their 
various  handicrafts.  Others  were  taught,  and  soon 
flourishing  industries  were  built  up.  Those  bred  to 
farming  cultivated  the  fields,  and  there  were  no  more 
productive  farms  in  the  country  than  these  speedily 
became.     Horses  and  cattle  were  bred,  and  the  stock 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  REFORMATION  19 

quickly  gained  a  high  repute  for  extra  quality,  and  brought 
the  highest  market  prices.  Labor  was  scarce  in  that 
region,  and  the  lords  of  the  soil  were  glad  to  employ  any 
who  could  be  spared  for  the  purpose.  The  better  trained 
and  more  intelligent  of  the  community  were  in  demand 
as  managers  of  farms,  mills,  vineyards,  stables.  The 
wares  turned  out  were  sent  to  the  fairs  and  markets,  and 
of  certain  handicrafts  almost  a  monopoly  was  gained. 
Their  tailors,  smiths,  and  weavers  were  of  the  best.  The 
knives,  scythes,  shoes,  stockings,  handkerchiefs,  and  other 
wares  produced  sold  promptly,  for  the  goods  were  honest 
and  the  prices  fair. 

The  Austerlitz  community  thus  became  prosperous, 
and  might  have  grown  rich,  but  for  its  internal  dissen- 
sions. These  were  partly  incidental  to  the  form  of  organ- 
ization, and  partly  the  result  of  religious  bigotry.  The 
community  formed  a  common  "household,"  occupying 
a  common  building,  to  the  number  of  several  hundred 
souls.  A  general  superintendent,  or  "householder,"  pre- 
sided. He  was  chosen  by  general  suffrage,  but  his  au- 
thority was  almost  despotic  and  was  often  despotically 
used.  The  householder  was  also  their  chief  pastor  or 
bishop,  but  besides  him  there  were  several  other  "min- 
isters of  the  word,"  or  preachers.  Others,  called  "min- 
isters of  necessities,"  or  deacons,  assisted  the  householder 
in  the  practical  work  of  administration.  Nobody  might 
preach  in  the  community,  or  even  give  private  religious 
instruction,  until  he  had  been  formally  called  to  this 
office  by  the  congregation.  This  rule  was  enforced  against 
all,  no  matter  how  famous  as  preachers  they  might  have 
been  elsewhere.  Discipline  was  maintained,  not  by  or- 
dinary expulsion  from  the  community,  but  by  excom- 


20  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

munication  —  which  made  of  the  excommunicated  a 
heathen,  to  whom  not  even  a  cup  of  cold  water  might 
be  given  by  a  member  of  the  community,  without  his 
incurring  the  same  penalty.  Obey  or  starve,  was  the 
stern  edict  of  the  society. 

Under  such  severe  and  minute  superintendence  as 
this  system  made  possible,  we  need  not  be  surprised 
that  the  labor  of  all  was  well  directed.  Each  lived 
for  all  and  all  for  each.  The  community  idea 
was  carried  into  nearly  every  detail  of  living:  the 
household  had  a  common  kitchen,  a  common  school- 
house,  a  common  nursery,  a  common  sick-room,  and 
of  course  a  common  dining  room.  But  each  family 
had  its  own  apartments,  and  the  family  was  nominally 
not  divided.  Clothing,  strictly  personal  articles,  and  the 
furnishings  of  apartments  were  private  property;  all 
else  was  common.  Of  course,  the  community  under- 
took to  regulate  the  marriages  of  its  members,  and 
seeking  a  partner  outside  was  punished  with  immediate 
exclusion. 

We  need  not  be  at  all  surprised  to  discover  that  this 
rigid  rule  was  provocative  of  much  murmuring  and  dis- 
satisfaction, with  occasional  open  rebellion.  William 
Reublin,  one  of  the  best  of  the  Swiss  Anabaptist  preachers, 
the  man  who  had  taught  and  baptized  Hubmaier,  found 
his  way  to  the  Austerlitz  society,  where  he  was  received 
as  a  member,  but  forbidden  to  exercise  his  gifts  until 
called  to  the  work,  and  Widemann's  influence  was  suffi- 
cient to  prevent  him  from  being  called.  In  spite  of 
this  prohibition,  during  an  absence  of  Widemann  he 
presumed  to  hold  private  meetings  for  the  study  of  the 
Bible,  to  the  great  edification  of  some  of  the  members, 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   REFORMATION  21 

and  for  this  offence  was  excluded  from  membership.^ 
He  in  vain  sought  forgiveness  and  restoration,  and  was 
on  the  point  of  starvation,  when  some  of  the  members 
refused  to  submit  longer  to  the  will  of  the  majority  and 
gave  him  succor. 

For  this  contumacy  they,  too,  were  excommunicated, 
but  this  made  still  further  trouble  in  the  community,  and 
more  than  one  hundred  members  resolved  to  stand  by 
Reublin.  Separating  from  the  Austerlitz  brethren,  they 
made  their  way  to  Auspitz,  nearly  midway  between 
Austerlitz  and  Nikolsberg,  where  a  convent  rented  them 
some  land  and  a  new  community  was  set  up.  These  two 
communities  rapidly  increased  in  number,  by  the  coming 
to  Moravia  of  refugees  from  all  quarters,  and  especially 
from  the  Tyrol,  where  a  bitter  persecution  was  now  rag- 
ing. By  1536  there  are  said  to  have  been  no  fewer  than 
eighty-six  such  communities  in  Moravia,  most  of  them 
numbering  several  hundred  persons  each,  and  one  boast- 
ing a  membership  of  two  thousand. 

We  have  not  sufficient  details  concerning  the  inner  life 
of  most  of  these  Anabaptist  societies  to  decide  whether 
the  difficulties  experienced  at  Austerlitz  and  Auspitz 
were  common  to  all.  These  difficulties,  as  we  have  seen, 
grew  in  large  part  out  of  the  form  of  organization  and 

'  Letter  to  Pilgram  Marbeck,  in  Cornelius,  Geschichlc  dcs  Miinslcr- 
ischen  Aufruhrs,  Leipzig,  1855,  i860,  II :  253.  Reublin  charges  the  lead- 
ers with  managing  the  property  of  the  community  dishonestly  and  fraud- 
ulently. They  permitted  the  rich  to  have  their  own  little  houses,  so  that 
Franz  and  his  wife  led  a  life  like  the  nobles.  At  meals  the  ordinary 
brethren  had  been  content  with  peas  and  cabbages,  but  the  leaders  and 
their  wives  had  meat,  fish,  fowls,  and  wine.  "Many  of  their  wives," 
says  Reublin,  "I  have  never  seen  at  the  common  table."  While  some 
might  be  in  want  of  shoes  and  shirts,  the  leaders  must  have  coals,  good 
breeches,  and  furs  in  abundance.     The  letter  is  dated  January  26,  1531. 


22  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF   JESUS 

the  opportunities  for  despotic  action  afforded  to  an 
ambitious  and  self-willed  leader.  The  spirit  of  the  com- 
munity itself  was  intolerant.  "There  was  as  much 
liberty  of  conscience  among  them  as  among  the  Papists," 
said  Sebastian  Franck,  a  contemporary  and  not  unsym- 
pathetic observer.  "He  who  will  not  say  them  yea  in 
all  things,  for  him  hath  God  stopped  the  ears,  and  be  he 
not  willing  to  turn  back  they  cast  him  out."  Truly, 
there  has  seldom  or  never,  in  the  history  of  Christianity, 
been  so  much  truculent  bitterness,  so  many  hard-hearted 
cruelties  exhibited,  as  were  shown  here  in  the  name  of 
brotherly  love.  We  are  not  now  concerned,  however, 
with  the  sinfulness  of  such  conduct,  but  with  its  effect 
on  the  community  life.  That  it  was  divisive  and  dis- 
integrating, and  could  be  only  such,  does  not  need 
argument. 

Other  difficulties  developed,  growing  out  of  the  com- 
munity life.  Not  a  few  parents  strenuously  objected 
to  the  community  method  of  bringing  up  their  children ; 
the  Scriptures,  as  they  pointedly  and  pertinently  said, 
exhort  parents  to  "bring  up  their  children  in  the  nur- 
ture and  admonition  of  the  Lord,"  and  nowhere  lay  that 
duty  on  others  than  the  parents.  Not  only  the  Scrip- 
tures, but  parental  love,  proved  to  be  totally  inconsist- 
ent with  the  system.  Moreover,  the  young  maidens 
of  the  community  strongly  objected  to  being  assigned 
husbands  without  their  consent.  Widemann  threatened 
to  give  the  brethren  "heathen  wives"  if  the  sisters  con- 
tinued obstinate,  by  which  he  probably  meant  no  worse 
than  wives  from  outside  the  community ;  but  his  intem- 
perate language  on  the  subject  caused  great  scandal,  and 
in  spite  of  his  authority  the  maidens  remained  obdurate. 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE  REFORMATION  23 

It  became  evident  in  no  long  time  that  Jacob  Wide- 
mann  possessed  the  quahties  of  an  agitator  rather  than 
those  of  an  organizer.  As  a  ruler,  desire  far  outran  per- 
formance with  him,  A  man  better  fitted  for  holding  to- 
gether and  directing  the  communities  must  be  found  or 
they  would  surely  fall  apart.  Such  a  man  was  found  in 
Jacob  Huter,  a  native  of  the  Tyrol,  who  had  learned  the 
hatter's  trade  in  Prag  and  practised  it  in  various  cities, 
and  had  also  become  an  ardent  and  successful  Anabap- 
tist preacher  in  his  native  valleys  from  about  1529.  Here 
he  built  up  a  large  number  of  Anabaptist  congregations, 
many  of  which  sought  refuge  in  Moravia  after  the  Aus- 
trian government  began  a  severe  persecution  in  all  its 
domains,  that  proved  especially  hot  in  the  Tyrol.  The 
mediation  of  Huter  was  sought  in  some  of  these  troubles 
at  Austerlitz,  and  he  improved  the  occasion  so  to  extend 
his  influence  that  he  finally  acquired  the  direction  of 
affairs,  not  only  at  Austerlitz,  but  at  Auspitz  ;  and  in  the 
other  communities  afterward  established  his  voice  was 
potent  though  not  always  controlling.  To  his  power  of 
organization  much  of  the  subsequent  prosperity  of  these 
societies  was  due.  At  one  time,  their  internal  dissen- 
sions had  so  weakened  the  Auspitz  community  that  they 
were  unable  to  pay  their  rent  and  were  in  danger  of  being 
dispossessed  ;  Huter  brought  financial  aid  from  the  T3^ro- 
lese  Anabaptists  and  assisted  the  community  in  regulat- 
ing their  affairs. 

Ill 

It  is  not  certain  that  all  the  Anabaptist  groups  in 
Moravia  were  organized  on  the  strict  socialistic  basis  of 
those  at  Austerlitz  and  Auspitz,  but  it  is  probable  that 


24  SOCI.\LISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

most  of  them  were.  We  do  not  hear  of  dissensions  in  the 
others,  whence  it  is  fair  to  conclude  that  they  were  less 
troubled  in  this  way.  In  general,  the  chronicles  preserved 
by  these  people,  and  the  references  to  them  in  Moravian 
literature  of  the  period,  warrant  the  conclusion  that,  as  a 
whole,  they  enjoyed  a  notable  degree  of  economic  pros- 
perity, so  long  as  they  were  not  interfered  with  from  with- 
out. Local  jealousy  finally  combined  with  religious  in- 
tolerance to  secure  the  suppression  of  these  Moravian 
communities.  We  first  hear  of  the  former  from  a  chron- 
icle of  the  Brethren  in  1600:  "During  this  year  a  great 
outcry  from  our  adversaries  has  gone  abroad  in  Moravia, 
that  the  fraternity  increases  beyond  measure  in  that 
country,  and  by  their  trade  do  no  small  damage  to  the 
commercial  interests  of  the  towns  and  boroughs.  For 
this  reason  the  reigning  princes  have  resolved  to  forbid 
us  to  erect  new  households,  and  yet  they  permit  the 
territorial  lords  to  make  use  of  the  Brothers  as  work- 
men."^ 

Even  before  this,  in  the  year  1567,  Maximilian  pro- 
posed to  expel  the  Anabaptists  from  Moravia,  with  the 
following  result,  according  to  Gindeley :  — 

And  now  a  new  and  entirely  unexpected  departure  from 
old  tradition  took  place  on  the  part  of  the  nobles.  In  union 
with  the  knights  (the  prelates  and  towns  did  not  take  part  in 
this  petition),  they  begged  the  emperor  to  allow  the  Ana- 
baptists to  remain  in  their  own  homes.  Not  because  the  peo- 
ple were  still  unconvicted  heretics,  nor  because  any  one  had 
an  interest  in  their  conversion ;  no,  it  was  set  on  foot  on  far 
more  practical  grounds,  namely,  that  the  Anabaptists  were 
even  more  profitable  subjects  than  the  Jews,  and  could  not  be 

^  Beck,  Geschichisbucker,  p.  331. 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE  REFORMATION  25 

banished  without  great  material  injuries.  Catholics,  Utra- 
quists,  as  well  as  Bohemian  Brethren,  bowed  before  the  weight 
of  their  own  argument.  The  Anabaptists  were,  in  fact,  every- 
where extremely  industrious,  thrifty,  temperate,  and  more- 
over, by  far  the  cleverest  workmen  in  Moravia.^ 

These  socialistic  settlements  were  finally  extinguished 
by  persecution,  not  by  any  failure  of  their  principles  to 
work  satisfactorily.  Some  of  the  communities  emigrated 
to  Russia  and  continued  to  thrive  there  until  recent 
times.  A  branch  founded  in  the  Tyrol  by  Jacob  Huter 
found  a  refuge  in  Russia  in  1769,  and  came  in  a  body  to 
the  United  States  in  1874.  They  have  established  them- 
selves in  five  communistic  societies  in  South  Dakota, 
where  they  now  number  nearly  five  hundred  communi- 
cant members.  There  seems  to  be  no  reason  why  they 
should  not  continue  to  prosper  indefinitely,  if  they  can 
avoid  religious  dissensions. 

Since  only  ten  years  at  most  of  peace  were  given  in 
Moravia  for  this  experiment,  much  caution  is  necessary 
in  any  inferences  that  we  may  draw  from  the  history  of 
these  communities.  There  have  been  instances  since 
that  day  of  communities  that  were  established  and  flour- 
ished more  than  a  decade,  only  to  end  in  failure  at  last, 
and  that  without  any  external  interference.  Bearing 
this  carefully  in  mind,  what  may  we  learn  from  this  first 
experiment  in  Socialism,  on  any  considerable  scale,  that 
history  records  ? 

First,  it  illustrates  the  difficulties  of  introducing  So- 
cialism out-of-hand,  as  socialists  once  hoped  to  do.     So- 

'  Ceschkhle  der  Bohmisrhcn  Briidcr,  Prag,  1857,  II :  19.  This  testi- 
mony, from  a  historian  who  by  no  means  sympathizes  with  the  Anabap- 
tists, is  very  significant. 


26  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

ciety  as  a  whole  is  not  yet  educated  up  to  the  pitch  neces- 
sary for  the  successful  working  of  socialistic  principles ; 
and  not  even  a  picked  community,  actuated  by  one  of 
the  strongest  unifying  principles  yet  discovered  —  a  com- 
mon religious  enthusiasm  —  is  yet  educated  to  the  proper 
point.  The  most  successful  communities  since  those  of 
Moravia  have  been  communities  in  which  religion  was 
the  strongest  bond ;  but  not  even  religion  has  been  power- 
ful enough  to  restrain  jealousy  and  strife.  Brotherly 
love,  without  the  sanctions  of  religion,  is  too  weak  a  sen- 
timent to  be  seriously  considered  as  a  bond  to  hold  men 
and  women  long  together.  And  if  some  way  could  be 
found  of  introducing  Socialism  universally  and  com- 
pelling men  to  live  under  the  system,  would  not  the  suffer- 
ing be  greater  under  such  a  system  than  it  is  now  ?  The 
study  of  these  communities  strongly  urges  men  rather  to 
bear  the  ills  they  have  than  flee  to  others  that  they  know 
not  of. 

Indeed,  so  obvious  has  this  inference  become  that  the 
Socialism  of  to-day  fully  recognizes  its  force.  The  new 
man  must  precede  the  new  social  order ;  or,  at  any  rate, 
a  new  man  must  be  evolved  and  will  be  evolved  as  fast 
as  the  new  social  order,  we  are  now  assured.  As  the 
changes  occur  that  are  to  transform  present  society  into 
the  socialistic  order,  men  will  become  accustomed  to  them, 
will  learn  to  adjust  themselves  to  them,  will  find  their 
condition  constantly  improving ;  and  by  the  time  the 
evolution  is  complete  the  new  man  will  be  complete  also. 
Let  us  hope  so,  for  if  not,  the  new  order  will  no  sooner 
be  attained  than  it  will  be  overthrown.  The  later  Social- 
ism offers  to  us  at  least  a  more  consistent  theory  than 
the  old,  in  that  it  does  not  require  us  to  believe  in  the 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE  REFORMATION  27 

possibility  of  any  machine-made  millennium.  We  can 
afford  with  patience,  and  possibly  with  hopefulness,  to 
await  the  evolution  and  see  what  it  will  bring  forth. 

Second,  we  ought  to  learn  from  this  experiment  that 
those  have  been  too  hasty  who  have  inferred  from  it  the 
economic  feasibihty  of  Socialism.  It  is  true  that  if  these 
communities  were  able  to  keep  the  peace  within,  and  were 
allowed  peace  without,  they  always  prospered.  So  far 
as  food,  clothing,  and  shelter  were  concerned,  plenty  and 
happiness  abounded.  If  men  had  only  bovine  wants,  and 
were  content  with  a  bovine  life,  these  communities  would 
have  furnished  an  elysium.^  But  we  must  not  forget 
that  these  were  picked  communities,  containing  members 
far  above  the  average  in  moral  character,  and  therefore 
capable  of  an  abnormal  economic  efhciency.  The  pro- 
portion of  those  who  w^ere  not  able-bodied  was  small, 
and  of  all  the  difhculties  they  experienced,  there  is  no 
mention  of  idleness.  Everybody  seems  to  have  been 
both  able  and  willing  to  work.  Economic  waste  was 
thus  reduced  to  the  minimum,  at  the  same  time  that 
economic  efficiency  was  exalted  to  the  maximum.     In 

'  It  is  perhaps  not  remarkable  that  people  who  had  never  before  known 
plenty  should  have  rejoiced  in  the  comforts  of  these  communities.  One 
of  their  number  thus  writes:  "How  we  keep  our  table  with  food  and 
drink :  we  have  meat  at  supper  every  day,  and  in  the  mornings  once 
twice,  thrice,  or  four  times  during  the  week,  according  as  the  seasons 
serve.  At  the  other  meals  we  are  content  with  vegetables.  Twice  every 
day  at  meals  a  luscious  drink  of  wine ;  otherwise  nothing  at  midday  nor 
in  the  afternoon,  nor  in  the  evening;  but  when  we  go  to  evening  prayers 
v/e  receive  a  drink,  and  sometimes  even  have  beer.  With  the  bread,  which 
is  generally  to  be  had  in  the  house,  we  are  quite  content,  even  if  we  are 
not  permitted  to  bake  anything  special  during  the  whole  year ;  this,  how- 
ever, we  are  permitted  to  do  when  there  is  any  particular  reason,  such  as 
for  the  Day  of  the  Lord's  Remembrance,  or  the  festivals  of  Easter,  Whit- 
suntide, and  Christmas."  —  Beck,  Geschichtshiicher ,  pp.  406,  407. 


28  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

any  organization  of  a  socialistic  nature  on  a  large  scale, 
including  a  province  or  a  nation,  or  even  a  city,  there 
would  necessarily  be  a  far  larger  proportion  of  the  dis- 
abled, the  defective,  the  aged,  and  others  who  could  con- 
tribute little  or  nothing  to  the  common  wealth.  It  is 
very  doubtful  if  a  like  willingness  to  work  would  be  found 
in  other  communities.  This  Moravian  experiment,  in 
a  word,  does  not  afford  a  fair  economic  test  of  the  theory 
of  Socialism,  for  the  experiment  was  not  conducted  under 
fairly  average  conditions. 

Third,  these  communities  exhibit  one  common  defect, 
of  a  very  grave  nature.  While  they  flourished,  so  far  as 
to  accumulate  ample  material  possessions,  there  was  a 
painful  absence  of  the  higher  life.  To  be  sure,  there  was 
religion  —  of  a  sort  —  narrow,  intense,  bigoted,  and  so 
far  it  was  recognized  that  man  does  not  live  by  bread 
alone.  But  aside  from  religion  there  was  hardly  any 
provision  for  the  higher  faculties.  Education  was  pro- 
vided in  a  common  school,  but  what  sort  of  education  ? 
The  most  elementary  instruction  in  reading,  writing,  and 
arithmetic  —  enough,  as  we  still  say,  to  fit  a  man  for 
"business,"  as  if  the  chief  business  of  a  man  in  this  world 
were  not  to  live  his  Hfe  well,  getting  the  most  out  of  it 
for  himself,  that  he  may  have  the  most  to  give  to  others. 
The  need  of  culture,  of  the  harmonious  development  of 
all  the  faculties,  so  as  to  make  of  a  man  something  like 
what  his  Creator  designed  him  to  be,  was  not  contem- 
plated by  these  people. 

This  is  due,  probably,  to  the  fact  that  they  were  so 
largely  of  the  peasant  and  artisan  class,  and  even  their 
leaders  were  men  of  little  education.  It  was  different 
among  the  Swiss  and  German  Anabaptists,  where  the 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  REFORMATION  29 

leaders  were  mainly  men  who  had  studied  at  the  best  uni- 
versities of  the  time.  We  cannot  excuse  the  failure  at 
this  point  of  these  ]\Ioravian  Anabaptists  on  the  plea  of 
their  poverty;  for  we  remember  that  one  of  the  first 
things  that  the  New  England  Puritans  did  when  they 
settled  in  Massachusetts  was  to  make  provision,  out  of 
their  po\erty,  for  the  establishment  of  a  college  in  which 
their  youth  might  be  trained.  If  the  need  of  higher  edu- 
cation had  been  felt  among  these  people,  they  could  have 
taken  some  step  towards  its  supply.  They  were  content 
to  remain  in  their  ignorance.  Of  any  appreciation  of 
literature,  of  art,  of  music,  except  so  far  as  the  latter  might 
be  made  available  in  singing  hymns,  we  find  no  trace 
among  them. 

Their  minds  were  set  on  the  lower  things.  The  real 
good  of  life  is  not  dependent  on  wealth,  and  therefore 
to  get  the  best  out  of  life  it  is  not  needful  for  a  man  or  a 
community  to  get  rich.  Money  will  not  buy  a  pure 
heart,  a  clear  conscience,  a  refined  nature,  a  trained  in- 
tellect, not  even  a  healthy  body.  A  moderate  amount 
of  money  is  a  great  help  to  the  acquirement  and  main- 
tenance of  some  of  these  things,  but  that  is  all.  Most  of 
the  things  that  really  count,  that  make  fife  worth  while 
— religion,  love  of  friends,  art,  literature,  music — do  not 
require  a  fortune  for  their  possession  and  enjoyment. 
"Superfluous  wealth  can  buy  superfluities  only,"  said 
Thoreau,  and  he  proved  by  his  life  at  Walden  that  most 
wealth  is  superfluous,  and  that  money  is  not  required 
to  procure  one  necessary  of  the  soul.  The  business  of 
an  immortal  soul  is  with  immortal  values.  When  the 
absolute  bodily  wants  have  been  provided,  when  man 
has  food,  shelter,  and  clothing,  there  is  but  one  thing 


30  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

necessary  to  live  the  higher  Hfe  of  the  spirit,  and  that  is 
the  desire  to  live  it.  To  one  in  whom  the  spirit  is  reg- 
nant, spiritual  things,  which  most  men  regard  as  mere 
luxuries,  are  the  real  necessaries  of  life.  "The  hfe  is  more 
than  the  meat,"  says  Ruskin.  "Meat!  perhaps  your 
right  to  that  may  be  pleadable;  but  other  rights  have 
to  be  pleaded  first.  Claim  your  crumbs  from  the  table, 
if  you  will;  but  claim  them  as  children,  not  as  dogs. 
Claim  your  right  to  be  fed,  but  claim  more  loudly  your 
right  to  be  holy,  perfect,  and  pure." 

While  these  highest  things  do  not  cost  much  in  money, 
they  do  cost  much  in  leisure.  A  man  must  have  time, 
and  a  good  deal  of  time,  to  loaf  and  invite  his  soul  (to 
speak  Whitmanese),  if  his  soul  is  to  grow.  This  sort  of 
loafing  not  only  does  not  make  a  loafer,  but  a  man  cannot 
be  made  without  it.  This  is  not  to  blaspheme  the  gospel 
of  work  so  urgently  proclaimed  by  Carlyle  and  Ruskin. 
Labor  is  something  to  which  we  ought  not  to  subm.it  as 
a  curse,  but  to  hail  as  a  blessing.  Work  is  natural  to 
man,  idleness  abnormal.  Labor  is  so  physiologically 
necessary  to  health  and  happiness  that  a  man  who  has 
no  work  must  make  himself  some.  The  "sports"  of 
the  leisure  class  exist  in  obedience  to  this  imperious  neces- 
sity. But  no  man  lives  by  labor  alone ;  at  best  he  may 
merely  exist ;  his  higher  nature  demands  culture.  Little 
money  will  satisfy  a  reasonable  man,  but  leisure  he  must 
have  for  his  soul  to  enjoy  its  possessions  and  to  grow 
heavenward. 

It  is  the  utter  failure  to  realize  these  things,  to  make 
any  provision  for  the  higher  hfe,  even  to  recognize  that 
there  was  any  higher  hfe,  save  in  their  narrow,  intense, 
intolerant    religious    convictions,   that  these  socialistic 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE  REFORMATION  31 

communities  mutely  witness.  No  life  could  be  more 
''comfortable"  than  theirs,  and  none  could  be  more 
colorless,  dreary,  unattractive,  unendurable.  The  life 
of  these  Moravian  socialists  was  thoroughly  respectable 
and  deadly  dull.  It  v;as  the  mechanical  plodding  of  a 
daily  treadmill,  with  no  touch  of  sentiment  or  beauty, 
with  no  aspiration  to  make  to-day's  accomplishment  a 
little  finer  than  yesterday's.  Such  a  life  raises  precisely 
the  same  question  as  is  suggested  by  our  present  civiliza- 
tion. Is  it  worth  ha\dng,  at  the  price  men  are  called  to  pay 
for  it? 

It  would  not  be  fair,  perhaps,  to  infer  that  all  Socialism 
will  tend  in  this  same  direction  and  in  the  end  have  no 
ideals  but  the  sensuous.  But  when  we  find  the  modern 
Socialism  mainly  concerned  with  material  things,  seldom 
recognizing  the  fact  that  the  humblest  task  may  be  shot 
through  with  the  golden  thread  of  the  ideal,  with  small 
place  in  its  programme  for  any  but  scientific  and  useful 
education,  with  little  appreciation  of  culture,  the  best 
books,  the  best  art,  the  best  music,  may  not  we  who 
believe  that  no  full  and  worthy  life  is  possible  without 
seeking  after  the  higher  things  be  pardoned  if  we  look 
forward  with  some  apprehension  to  a  future  in  which  this 
leaden-hued  Socialism  may  come  to  prevail,  as  its  proph- 
ets exultingly  tell  us  it  is  certain  to  do  ?  Is  the  whole 
world  to  come  to  the  state  of  mind  of  that  rich  man  of  the 
third  gospel,  whose  ground  brought  forth  plentifully, 
so  that  he  was  minded  to  pull  down  his  barns  and  build 
greater,  and  to  say  to  his  soul,  "Soul,  thou  hast  many 
goods  laid  up  for  many  years ;  take  thine  ease,  eat,  drink, 
be  merry"  ?  If  this  is  to  be  the  world's  ideal  of  felicity, 
then  the  sooner  a  Power  outside  says,  "Fool,  this  night 


32  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

thy  soul  is  required  of  thee,"  the  better.  If  Socialism 
has  nothing  higher  than  this  to  offer,  its  success  will  be 
the  failure  of  the  race. 

But,  while  it  is  necessary  to  note  this  defect  in  the 
Moravian  communities,  it  would  not  be  fair  to  conclude 
that  this  is  characteristic  of  Socialism.  Once  more  we 
must  remind  ourselves,  the  experiment  in  Moravia  was 
too  brief  to  offer  material  for  definite  judgment.  All 
that  we  can  do  is,  note  certain  defects  and  tendencies,  as 
well  as  certain  successes,  guard  ourselves  from  drawing 
too  large  inferences  from  our  premises,  and  reserve  judg- 
ment until  we  have  further  studied  both  the  theories  of 
Socialism  and  the  workings  of  other  socialistic  experi- 
ments. 


II 

THE  BEGINNINGS    OF   MODERN   SOCIALISM   IN 

FRANCE 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Marx,  The  Poverty  of  Philosophy.     Chicago,  1910. 

Jaures,  Studies  in  Socialism.     New  York,  1906. 

Guthrie,  Socialism  before   the  French  Revolution.     New  York, 

1907. 
Ely,  French  and  German  Socialism  in  Modern  Times.     New  York, 

1886. 
Laveleye,  Socialism  of  To-day.     London,  1885. 


II 

THE    BEGINNINGS    OF    MODERN    SOCIALISM    IN    FEANCE 


Socialism,  both  as  a  philosophy  and  as  a  concerted 
movement,  has  its  real  beginning  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, and  must  be  regarded  as  among  the  most  remark- 
able developments  of  that  age. 

As  a  philosophy,  Socialism  proposes  an  interpretation 
of  history  that  is  worthy  of  a  preliminary  examination. 
A  great  evolution  has  been  in  progress  for  ages,  of  which 
Socialism  is  held  to  be  the  necessary  outcome.^  The 
essential  feature  of  this  long-continued  movement  is  a 
reaction  against  the  theory  of  imperiahsm,  or  centralized 
authority,  embodied  in  the  Roman  Empire  and  continued 
in  the  Roman  Church.  In  its  successive  stages  this  re- 
action has  received  various  names :  the  struggle  for  lib- 
erty of  thought  was  called  the  Renaissance ;  the  contest 
for  religious  freedom  was  known  as  the  Reformation ; 

1  It  is  somewhat  difficult  for  us  to  receive  this  interpretation  of  his- 
tory, because  the  social  order  to  which  we  have  been  accustomed  from 
childhood  seems  to  us  a  very  stable  thing,  and  we  can  hardly  believe  in 
the  possibility  of  radical  changes  in  it.  But  this  apparent  stability  of 
society  proves,  on  even  a  sliglit  investigation,  to  be  as  deceptive  as  the 
apparent  stabilily  of  the  earth  —  it  is  hard  to  convince  a  child  or  a  sav- 
age that  the  earth  turns  completely  over  every  twenty-four  hours,  and  is 
continually  turning  at  a  ?pccd  compared  with  which  the  swiftest  railway 
frain  might  seem  to  be  standing  still. 

35 


36  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

the  attempt  to  win  civic  freedom  men  named  the  Revo- 
lution. So  much  as  this  has  long  been  accepted  as  a 
sound  historical  generalization. 

But  the  socialist  further  asserts  that  underneath  this 
evolution,  conditioning  and  controlling  these  outward 
manifestations,  was  a  series  of  economic  changes  in  so- 
ciety that  historians  have  too  little  recognized.  When 
Christianity  began  its  career  in  the  Roman  Empire,  it 
found  a  social  order  based  on  the  institution  of  slavery, 
whose  principal  source  of  wealth  was  cultivation  of  the 
soil.  This  society  was  itself  an  advance  on  the  prehistoric 
barbarism,  in  which  a  continual  state  of  war  prevailed. 
In  such  wars  the  defeated  were  at  first  killed  on  the  spot 
by  the  victors,  or  taken  prisoners  only  to  be  put  to  death 
by  cruel  tortures,  as  with  the  American  aborigines,  or 
to  be  eaten,  as  is  still  the  custom  among  various  African 
tribes.  But  after  a  time  it  was  discovered  that  the  worst 
use  to  which  men  could  put  a  fellow-man  was  to  kill 
him  —  that  it  was  far  more  profitable  to  spare  his  life 
and  condemn  him  to  perpetual  servitude.  Greek  and 
Roman  civilization  was  based  on  this  system.  At  first 
free  labor  flourished  alongside  of  slave  labor,  but  at  length 
slave  labor  drove  out  free  labor  and  the  agricultural 
system  of  the  Empire  became  a  series  of  vast  farms  or 
ranches  worked  by  slaves.  This  system  was  falling  into 
decay  when  the  irruption  of  the  Germanic  tribes  precipi- 
tated its  downfall,  and  out  of  the  ruins  of  slavocracy 
slowly  emerged  another  social  order,  feudalism. 

Feudalism  had  the  same  economic  basis  as  Roman 
civilization ;  the  main  source  of  wealth  was  still  agricul- 
ture. But  under  feudalism  arms  was  the  only  caUing 
of  the  freeborn  population,  and  a  class  to  cultivate  the 


MODERN  SOCIALISM  IN  FRANCE  37 

soil  was  a  necessity.  Slavery  had  ceased  to  be  profitable, 
and  gradually  became  modified  into  serfdom.  The 
slave's  labor  had  been  unpaid,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
owner  took  the  responsibility  of  the  slave's  maintenance. 
The  serf  was  no  longer  a  chattel,  but  the  land  was  not 
his.  He  was  permitted  to  occupy  it,  on  condition  of 
giving  part  of  his  labor  to  the  feudal  proprietor,  and  he 
paid  the  remainder  of  his  rent  in  kind ;  that  is,  from  the 
produce  of  the  soil  that  he  cultivated  in  his  own  time. 
Neither  he  nor  his  wife  and  children  could  be  sold  to 
another  master  without  their  consent,  but  this  freedom 
of  person  was  not  accompanied  by  any  great  increase  of 
comfort  or  privilege.  It  is  doubtful  if  the  serf  were  better 
lodged,  better  fed,  or  better  clothed  than  the  slave. 
Even  his  advance  in  personal  liberty  was  slight,  for  he 
could  not  change  his  domicile  without  his  lord's  consent 
—  he  was  adscripius  glebes. 

The  close  of  the  Middle  Ages  saw  the  decay  of  feudal- 
ism, and  the  rise  of  a  new  system,  based  on  commerce. 
Agriculture  was  no  longer  the  mainstay  of  European 
society ;  manufactures  vied  with  cultivation  of  the  soil 
as  a  source  of  wealth,  while  commerce,  surpassing  both, 
became  the  foundation  of  the  new  social  order.  We 
mark  the  growth  of  this  new  order  by  the  upspringing 
of  numerous  crafts  and  guilds,  by  the  rise  of  free  cities 
that  the  guilds  built  up  and  sustained,  and  the  Hansas 
or  leagues  of  cities  for  the  protection  and  furtherance  of 
commerce.  The  first  stages  in  the  rise  of  modern  Cap- 
italism are  found  in  the  fortunes  —  great  for  their  time  — 
that  were  accumulated  through  this  commerce.  With 
this  new  commercialism  came  the  need  for  facilitation 
of  exchanges,  and  this  produced  banking,  with  its  bills  of 

431G96 


38  SOCIALISM   AND   THE    ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

exchange,  drafts,  and  credits.     The  coining  of  money, 
ahnost  disused  under  feudahsm,  also  began  anew. 

The  more  enterprising  of  the  serf  or  peasant  class  for- 
sook their  fields  and  lords,  in  spite  of  all  attempts  to  re- 
strain and  punish  them,  and  became  artisans,  tradesmen, 
burghers.  Wealth  was  gradually  transferred  from  the 
owners  of  the  soil  to  the  merchants,  bankers,  and  crafts- 
men. The  cities  grew  rich  and  powerful  at  the  e.q)ense 
of  the  country,  and  the  result  was  the  formation  of  a 
strong  middle  class,  which  became  the  wealthiest  and 
therefore  the  most  powerful  body  in  the  state.  The  con- 
tinued refusal  to  this  body  of  political  rights,  the  con- 
tinued imposition  on  them  of  inequitable  burdens  by 
those  who  had  been  born  to  rank  and  titles,  led  finally 
to  the  uprising  of  the  bourgeoisie  or  middle  class,  or  third 
estate,  that  is  known  as  the  Revolution.  The  ostensible 
object  of  the  Revolution  was  the  abolition  of  privilege 
and  the  estabhshment  of  "liberty,  fraternity,  equahty." 
But  these  were  mere  words ;  the  real  object  was  the  trans- 
ference of  political  and  social  power  from  the  nobility 
to  the  middle  class.  In  this  struggle  the  remnants  of 
feudalism  disappeared,  and  out  of  it  the  modern  social 
order  emerged. 

II 

We  see,  therefore,  that  the  history  of  the  world  is  the 
history  of  a  struggle  for  wealth,  power,  honor  —  first  a 
struggle  between  communities  or  nations  or  races,  and 
then  in  the  conquering  community  or  nation  a  struggle 
between  classes.  The  law  of  survival  applies  to  societies 
as  well  as  to  individuals ;  communities  must  be  fitted  to 
survive,  class  must  prove  superior  to  class,  as  truly  as 


MODERN   SOCIALISM   IX    FRANCE  39 

man  to  man.  Historians  have  given  their  attention 
chiefly  to  the  struggle  between  nations,  and  the  wars 
waged  between  them  for  the  control  of  the  earth  and  its 
resources;  and  have  too  little  regarded  the  equally  un- 
ending social  war,  which,  while  it  has  been  less  spectacu- 
lar, has  had  consequences  much  more  far-reaching  and 
important.  History  will  for  the  future  be  less  concerned 
with  dynasties  and  constitutions  and  great  battles,  and 
investigate  more  carefully  the  economic  condition  and 
social  organization  of  the  various  classes  of  the  people. 
In  other  words,  we  are  beginning  to  study  the  real  cur- 
rent of  the  world's  movements,  and  not  the  mere  foam 
and  spray. 

In  all  these  changes  that  we  have  briefly  traced,  we 
see  one  principle  abiding :  alike  in  the  Gr£eco-Roman 
civilization  and  in  feudalism  and  in  the  triumph  of  the 
bourgeoisie,  the  individual  man  was  always  held  to  be 
the  social  unit.  Every  man  fought  for  his  own  hand 
against  the  powers  of  nature  and  the  encroachments  of 
his  fellows.  This  was  modified  in  social  life  by  the  fam- 
ily, the  club,  and  in  economic  activities  by  the  guild,  the 
firm.  The  principle  of  cooperation  was  beginning  to 
develop,  but  it  was  as  yet  so  restricted  in  operation  that 
its  significance  was  not  suspected,  and  individual  enter- 
prise was  still  the  general  rule. 

The  political  reaction  against  absolutism  not  only  in- 
tensified this  individualism,  but  gave  for  a  time  an  ex- 
clusively poUtical  phase  to  the  struggle  to  win  liberty 
and  equality.  For  ages  the  chief  oppressors  of  men  had 
been,  or  had  been  believed  to  be,  their  rulers ;  hence  the 
attempt  to  rise  in  the  scale  of  manhood  was  first  of  all 
an  attack  on  kings  and  nobles,  the  "tyrants"  and  "aris- 


40  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

tocrats"  who  had  abused  and  abased  mankind  too  long. 
Privilege,  the  deadly  foe  of  equality,  was  supposed  to  be 
rooted  in  royalty  and  aristocracy  —  political  institutions, 
that  must  therefore  be  gotten  rid  of  as  a  prime  condition 
of  progress.  This  was  true,  but  not  the  whole  truth. 
The  long  contest  bred  a  habit  of  mind :  a  looking  at  all 
the  problems  of  society  as  questions  of  political  organi- 
zation, which  would  be  solved  by  giving  every  man  the 
ballot.  And  thus  a  mischievous  delusion  was  spread 
widely :  that  when  political  oppression  was  destroyed, 
there  would  be  no  oppression  existent  or  possible,  for 
the  man  with  the  ballot  could  defend  himself  against  all 
oppressors. 

But  it  was  soon  discovered  that  the  new  Revolution, 
by  breaking  down  the  old  privilege  and  giving  every  man 
the  ballot,  had  not  in  fact  much  improved  the  condition 
of  the  man  who  must  rely  on  daily  labor  for  daily  bread. 
"Liberty,  fraternity,  equality,"  were  beautiful  ideals, 
but  they  corresponded  to  no  realities.  The  laborer 
found  that  he  had  exchanged  the  feudal  noble  for  the 
capitalist,  the  castle  for  the  factory.  He  was  made 
painfully  aware  that  the  old  chains  which  bound  him  to 
poverty  and  misery  had  been  newly  gilt,  not  broken. 
What  was  euphoniously  called  "freedom"  he  found  to 
be  lifelong  dependence  of  all  but  a  few  on  the  will  of 
others,  the  owners  of  land  and  capital ;  and  to  be  depend- 
ent on  the  will  of  another  is  the  essence  of  slavery. 
Carlyle  uttered  a  great  truth  when  he  said  that  the  wage- 
earner  differs  from  a  chattel  slave  in  that  he  is  bought 
for  a  short  time  and  the  slave  for  a  lifetime. 

That  he  was  really  free,  simply  because  he  was  free  to 
vote,  the  laborer  soon  found  to  be  the  barest  and  least 


MODERN   SOCI.\LISM  IN  FRANCE  41 

satisfying  of  delusions.  What  is  a  ballot  worth  to  a  man 
who  has  no  job,  and  who  cannot  find  one  ?  What  value 
has  "freedom"  for  the  man  to  whom  it  means  only  that 
he  is  free  to  suffer  cold  and  hunger  and  live  in  a  slum  ? 
If  freedom  has  any  real  meaning,  it  means  equality  of 
opportunity,  equality  of  privilege.  Instead  of  such 
equality,  the  poor  man  after  the  glorious  Revolution 
found  himself  in  the  same  state  of  economic  slavery  as 
before. 

jMany  urgently  protest  against  that  phrase  "economic 
slavery,"  on  the  ground  that  a  certain  degree  of  servitude 
is  inseparable  from  living  in  this  world.  Man's  existence 
on  earth  will  ever  mean  that  he  has  the  problem  to  solve 
of  wresting  a  living  from  the  soil.  The  danger  of  cold 
and  hunger  will  ever  act  as  a  spur  to  exertion,  and  so  far 
man  is  of  necessity  a  "slave"  to  economic  conditions. 
But  nobody  is  in  danger  of  overlooking  a  fact  so  obvious. 
What  men  see  and  question  is  the  other  fact,  also  perfectly 
obvious,  that  the  man  whose  toil  wrings  wealth  out  of 
the  reluctant  earth  is  now  paid  least,  while  the  largest 
part  of  what  he  produces  by  his  sweat  and  blood  goes  to 
those  who  are  like  the  lilies  of  the  field  in  one  respect,  that 
they  toil  not,  neither  do  they  spin.  The  socialist  ad- 
mits that  man  must  work,  but  from  this  truth  he  draws 
the  corollary  that  all  men  should  work.  The  vast  ma- 
jority of  men  now  belong  to  the  ranks  of  the  toilers ;  it 
is  better  for  the  individual,  better  for  society,  that  every 
capable  person  should  produce  his  share,  earn  his  own 
living.  "If  a  man  will  not  work,  neither  shall  he  eat" 
is  good  ethics.  Work  is  a  necessity,  but  it  is  not  a  ne- 
cessity that  man  should  be  thwarted  in  his  efforts  by  his 
fellow-man,  or  plundered  of  the  fruits  of  his  toil  without 


42  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

redress.     "All  social  evils  and  religious  errors,"  declares 
Ruskin,  "arise  out  of  the  pillage  of  the  laborers  by  the 
idlers,"  and  he  does  not  greatly  overstate  the  matter. 
According  to  the  Declaration,  man  has   an   inalienable 
right  to  "Hfe,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,"  but 
life  and  liberty  are  impossible  without  the  opportunity 
to  labor,  while  the  pursuit  of  happiness  is  but  a  mockery 
if  a  man  is  systematically  robbed  of  the  fruits  of  his  labor. 
The  sociahst  finds  the  secret  of  the  laborer's  failure  to 
profit  by  the  Revolution  in  the  impetus  that  great  up- 
heaval  gave  to  individualism.     Pure  individualism,  of 
course,  never  existed  on  any  extended  scale,  or  for  any 
long  time.     Robinson  Crusoe  on  his  desert  island  might 
practice  —  and  enjoy,  if  he  could  —  pure  individuahsm, 
but  the  moment  his  man  Friday  came,  a  society  was  born. 
Society  is  not  a  business  partnership,  an  arbitrary  in- 
vention for  purposes  of  convenience,  —  the  "social  con- 
tract" never  existed  outside  of  the  imagination  of  Rous- 
seau, —  but  a  necessity  of  human  life.     Various  forms  of 
social  organization  have  come  into  being,  as  they  were 
found  to  be  efficient  weapons  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 
The  biological  analogy  may  be  pushed  too  far  in  the  study 
of  society,  but  it  is  a  real  analogy  —  society  is  an  organ- 
ism, and  not  a  mere  organization. 

The  closest  approach  to  individualism  was  when  men 
were  first  emerging  from  barbarism,  and  every  man  made 
for  himself  whatever  he  required,  or  did  without.  But 
barter  must  have  begun  very  soon  after  making,  and  with 
exchange  of  products  there  was  an  end  of  strict  individu- 
alism. The  specialization  of  labor  into  trades  followed 
speedily,  each  man  doing  what  he  could  do  better  than 
others,  and  exchanging  his  surplus  products  for  the  prod- 


MODERN  SOCI-\LISM   IN  FRANCE  43 

ucts  of  Others.  This  state  of  things  is  found  in  tribes 
either  barbarous  or  semibarbarous.  Commerce  is  merely 
another  trade,  that  of  promoting  exchanges.  Return 
even  to  such  a  state  of  comparative  individuaHsm  as  pre- 
vailed a  century  ago  is  impossible,  as  impossible  as  re- 
turn to  the  stone  age,  —  it  is  a  stage  of  development  that 
has  forever  passed  away. 

To  this  relative  individuaHsm,  as  applied  to  the  pro- 
duction of  wealth,  the  Revolution  gave  a  fresh  and  power- 
ful impetus.  The  watchword  of  the  industrial  and 
commercial  world  was  "free  competition"^  between 
individual  producers.  After  the  Revolution  this  became 
the  recognized  foundation  of  the  economic  system  that 
prevailed  throughout  Europe  and  America,  sometimes 
interfered  with,  but  even  then  in  an  almost  apologetic 
spirit.  Among  a  certain  school  of  Enghsh  economists 
this  principle  of  free  competition  acquired  almost  the 
sanction  of  a  moral  law,  held  to  be  as  inexorable  as  gravi- 
tation. One  may  of  course  ignore  gravitation  and  cast 
himself  down  from  the  housetop,  but  broken  bones  will 
be  the  penalty.  So  the  law  of  supply  and  demand  may 
be  obstructed,  interfered  with,  by  legislative  and  other 
expedients,  but  economic  penalties  are  invariably  exacted. 
Hence  laissez  faire,  let  things  alone,  became  the  motto 
of  this  school ;  free  competition  under  the  law  of  supply 
and  demand  would  solve  all  economic  problems,  and  it 
was  deemed  worse  than  useless  to  seek  any  other  solu- 

1  There  are  sharp  limitations  of  theoretical  free  competition,  imposed 
either  by  natural  conditions  or  by  law.  Free  competition  in  land  is  made 
impossible  by  nature  —  the  quantity  of  land  is  limited.  Free  competition 
in  machinery  is  limited  by  legal  monoiK)lies,  known  as  "patents."  Free 
competition  in  exchanges  is  deliberately  destroyed  by  tariffs.  Com- 
petition, therefore,  in  practice  irresistibly  tends  to  give  place  to  monopoly. 


44  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

tion.  The  principle  was  maintained  with  a  fanatical 
energy  of  conviction  that  made  it  almost  respectable. 
Almost,  but  not  quite,  for  there  were  never  lacking  proph- 
ets, like  Ruskin  and  Carlyle,  to  lift  up  voices  in  protest 
against  this  school  of  economics,  and  to  proclaim  its 
fundamental  principle  not  only  unchristian  but  inhuman. 
Though  at  first  few  would  listen  to  such  protests,  an  in- 
creasing number  of  people  came  to  see  that  if  the  science 
of  economics  can  be  divorced  from  ethics,  it  should  not  be. 

Free  competition  and  laissez  faire  held  the  field  a  long 
time,  however,  triumphant  if  not  undisputed ;  and  under 
the  sway  of  such  ideas  the  capitalistic  system  developed 
rapidly.  It  had  its  beginnings,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the 
rise  of  commerce  during  the  later  Middle  Ages,  and  pro- 
gressed with  only  moderate  rapidity  until  the  nineteenth 
century.  Then  it  advanced  by  leaps  and  bounds.  The 
reason  for  this  sudden  increase  was  the  number  of  in- 
ventions made  late  in  the  eighteenth  century  of  machin- 
ery, to  which  steam  could  be  applied  as  a  motive  power, 
among  the  earhest  of  which  were  the  spinning-jenny  and 
the  power-loom.  This  combination  of  steam  and  ma- 
chinery enormously  increased  production,  through  the 
rise  of  the  modern  factory.  Hundreds  of  costly  machines 
and  thousands  of  busy  laborers,  assembled  under  one 
roof,  have  substituted  socialized  production  for  individual 
production. 

Hitherto,  hand  labor  had  been  on  the  whole  distinctly 
favorable  to  individuahsm  in  production,  and  had  con- 
sequently retarded  the  development  of  Capitalism.  Ma- 
chine labor  was,  on  the  whole,  fatal  to  individualism  in 
production,  and  made  socialized  production  and  Capital- 
ism inevitable.     Thenceforth  society  tended  to  divide 


MODERN   SOCIALISM   IN  FRANCE  45 

into  two  classes,  the  employers  and  the  employed  —  a 
distinction  that  had  previously  existed,  but  that  now 
tended  to  become  universal  and  to  harden  gradually  into 
castes.  It  was  and  still  is  possible,  in  theory,  for  any  of 
the  employed  class  to  rise  and  become  employers;  and 
for  any  of  the  employer  class  to  fall  back  among  the  em- 
ployed ;  and  the  theory  is  justified  by  a  certain  number 
of  cases  of  both  kinds.  But,  taking  each  class  as  a  whole, 
status  tends  to  become  fLxed  by  birth,  and  passage  from 
one  class  to  the  other  becomes  increasingly  difficult  and 
infrequent.  It  is  likewise  theoretically  possible  for  any 
male  child  born  in  the  United  States,  if  he  lives,  to  be- 
come President ;  but  a  laborer's  chance  of  becoming  a 
capitalist  is  nearly  as  remote  as  that  of  his  becoming 
President. 

And  yet  men  are  told,  with  tiresome  iteration,  as  they 
have  been  told  for  generations,  that  any  man  can  by 
diligence  and  frugahty  rise  to  wealth  and  power.  The- 
oretically this  is  true  of  any  given  man,  but  it  is  mathe- 
matically impossible  for  the  mass.  Under  present  social 
conditions,  for  one  to  be  rich  many  must  remain  poor. 
The  Pennsylvania  Railroad  has  many  thousands  of  em- 
ployees, but  only  one  president,  and  the  other  highly 
profitable  posts  are  few.  No  matter  how  diligent,  all 
of  the  employees  cannot  rise  to  the  chief  posts,  until  one 
and  one  somehow  make  ten.  It  is  not  the  fault  of  the 
poor  that  they  do  not  rise,  though  some  of  the  poor  may 
be  at  fault ;  it  is  in  the  nature  of  present  conditions  that 
only  an  exceptional  few  can  rise.  And  the  number  of 
those  who  can  "get  on"  by  any  amount  of  skill  and  exer- 
tion relatively  decreases  with  the  increasing  scale  of 
modern  enterprise.     A  generation  ago,  in  a  small  business 


46  SOCIALISM  AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

where  half  a  dozen  clerks  were  employed,  one  of  them 
might  without  much  difiiculty  in  time  become  a  member 
of  the  firm ;  but  put  the  same  man  now  in  a  great  de- 
partment store  among  five  thousand  fellows,  and  what 
is  his  chance  of  ultimate  membership  in  the  firm?  It 
is  precisely  because  the  present  system  virtually  denies 
advancement  to  thrift  and  industry,  save  to  a  fortunate 
few,  that  its  injustice  is  so  keenly  felt. 

While  labor  was  thus  becoming  socialized,  Capitalism 
continued  to  increase  along  the  line  of  individualism. 
Free  competition  was  at  first  necessary  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  system,  and  was  found  to  be  thoroughly  ad- 
vantageous —  up  to  a  certain  point.  Only  through  un- 
restricted rivalry  could  some  men,  superior  in  a  certain 
shrewdness,  in  power  of  organization,  in  commercial  in- 
stinct, become  employers  of  their  fellows  —  on  a  small 
scale  at  first,  then  on  a  large  scale  —  and  by  exploiting 
the  labor  of  the  less  shrewd  obtain  the  lion's  share  of  the 
profits,  and  so  build  up  a  great  industrial  concern  and  a 
great  fortune.  This  was  perfectly  honest,  according  to 
the  prevailing  ethical  standards,  by  no  means  incompati- 
ble with  strict  integrity  and  even  with  generous  philan- 
thropy, as  those  words  were  then  understood.  Ethical 
standards  are  beginning  to  change,  and  men  are  coming 
to  question  whether  this  method  of  acquiring  wealth  is 
in  accord  with  fundamental  equity  —  whether  the  so- 
called  "captain  of  industry"  deserves  the  great  share  of 
what  is  produced  that  he  has  so  far  succeeded  in  annexing. 

While  Capitalism  was  thus  developing,  free  competi- 
tion in  labor  was  essential  to  its  interests,  —  that  is, 
laborers  must  be  permitted  and  encouraged  to  bid  against 
each  other  for  jobs,  which  would  go  to  the  lowest  bidder, 


MODERN  SOCIALISM  IN  FRANCE  47 

not  the  highest.  But  this  was  as  much  against  the  inter- 
est of  the  laborer  as  it  was  favorable  to  the  employer. 
Such  free  competition  was  a  very  one-sided  affair,  for  the 
theory  that  the  laborer  was  also  free,  if  he  did  not  like 
the  terms  offered  by  one  employer  to  seek  employment 
elsewhere  was  only  valid  on  paper,  not  in  actual  life.  In 
the  beginning  of  the  factory  system,  when  the  amount  of 
capital  invested  was  small  and  new  enterprises  were  easily 
begun  on  a  small  scale,  when  individual  hand  labor  was 
still  not  impossible,  though  every  day  becoming  less 
profitable,  the  employer  and  the  employed  bargained  on 
something  hke  equal  terms.  But  to-day,  with  hand 
labor  practically  obsolete,  with  vast  aggregations  of 
capital  invested  in  manufacturing  plants,  with  men  and 
women  employed  by  hundreds  and  even  by  thousands 
in  a  single  concern,  to  talk  of  the  workman's  "freedom 
of  contract"  is  either  silly  or  a  deliberate  attempt  to  de- 
ceive. The  modern  workman,  not  by  statute  law,  but  by 
the  iron  law  of  necessity,  is  as  strictly  bound  to  the  fac- 
tory as  ever  serf  was  to  the  soil.  The  condition  of  the 
proletarian  is  hardly  better  than  serfdom  in  fact,  whatever 
it  may  be  in  theory.  Wage  slavery  is  more  profitable 
to  the  capitalist  than  chattel  slavery  or  serfdom,  but  how 
much  better  it  is  for  the  worker  is  an  unsolved  question. 
Absolute  freedom  is  admittedly  incompatible  with  life 
in  a  society,  for  such  hfe  of  itself  imposes  strict  obliga- 
tions, from  which  none  can  free  himself  or  be  freed.  But 
equality  of  opportunity  to  live  and  labor  and  enjoy 
is  at  least  conceivable,  whether  realizable  or  not.  It  is 
promised  men  by  the  existing  social  order,  but  what  is 
the  fact?  The  only  means  of  obtaining  a  livelihood  is, 
for  the  great  majority  of  those  who  toil  with  their  hands. 


48  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

to  obtain  emplo3'mcnt  in  the  shop  or  factory,  and  often 
only  a  single  shop  is  available.  The  employer  holds  in 
his  hands,  all  but  absolutely,  the  means  of  support  —  if 
he  withholds  a  job,  it  means  suffering,  perhaps  starvation, 
for  the  laborer.  When  he  deals  with  a  worker  singly,  he 
is  master  of  the  situation,  and  may  dictate  terms  that  the 
worker  must  accept.  The  worker  seeking  a  job  under 
such  conditions  bargains  with  his  hands  tied.  His  free- 
dom is  fairly  comparable  to  that  of  the  man  of  whom  the 
highwayman  demands,  "Your  money  or  your  life  !"  Of 
course  the  man  is  perfectly  free  to  keep  his  purse  and  lose 
his  life.  Just  so  free  is  a  man  out  of  work,  with  wife  and 
children  looking  to  him  for  bread,  to  refuse  work  when  the 
owner  of  the  shop  says,  "Take  this  wage  or  none  !"  He 
is  free  to  refuse  the  work  —  and  starve.  If  this  is  free- 
dom, what  would  slavery  be  like  ? 

It  should  not  be  forgotten,  of  course,  that  all  employers 
have  not  been  grasping  and  heartless,  but  it  is  average 
human  nature  to  take  advantage  of  the  chance  to  make 
a  good  bargain,  and  to  get  all  that  may  legally  be  had 
for  one's  money.  And  besides,  employers  who  would 
willingly  pay  higher  wages  are  often  compelled  to  pay 
the  lower,  because  otherwise  they  could  not  sell  their 
product  in  competition  v/ith  the  less  considerate  employer. 
Only  by  collective  dealing  with  the  employer  through 
their  unions  have  workers  been  able  to  better  their  posi- 
tion and  obtain  something  approaching  justice.  Other- 
wise there  is  freedom  of  contract  only  on  the  side  of  the 
capitalist.  He  controls  the  instruments  of  production, 
and  the  proletarian  can  find  work  only  on  the  capitalist's 
terms.  And  while  the  proletarian  must  have  work,  the 
capitalist  will  at  worst  suffer  financial  loss  if  he  fails  to 


MODERN  SOCIALISM  IN   FRANCE  49 

secure  the  labor  that  his  business  requires.  Freedom 
of  contract  indeed  ! 

Capitalism,  however,  found  in  time  that  free  compe- 
tition had  its  drawbacks  —  for  the  capitahst.  Indi- 
vidualism broke  down  under  the  strain,  as  individualism 
had  already  broken  down  in  the  laboring  class,  and  col- 
lectivism in  capital  began.  Competition  became  so 
fierce  that  none  but  the  strongest  concerns  could  endure, 
and  their  profits  were  cut  down  to  the  vanishing  point. 
This  desperate  struggle  for  existence  among  the  capital- 
ists could  not  go  on  without  danger  of  universal  bank- 
ruptcy. There  was,  moreover,  great  economic  waste  in 
competitive  production,  which  was  not  appreciated  in 
its  earher  stages :  duplication  of  plants,  unnecessary  in- 
vestment of  capital,  expensive  managers  and  salesmen. 
Then  began  a  consolidation  of  interests,  with  a  view  to 
the  elimination  of  waste,  the  ending  of  competition,  and 
so  to  an  increase  of  prices  and  profits  —  in  a  word,  the 
era  of  the  Trust.  By  pursuit  of  this  method  for  a  gen- 
eration, the  production  of  wealth  has  been  largely  social- 
ized, both  as  to  labor  and  capital ;  while  the  distribution 
of  wealth  remains  as  before. 

The  Trusts  and  great  corporations  have  taken  a  long 
step  towards  collectivism ;  a  few  hundred  men  now  con- 
trol the  great  mass  of  our  industries.  Yet  they  insist  that 
individualism  shall  continue  in  the  distribution  of  wealth 
—  there  is  still  to  be  a  great  scramble,  and  every  man  is 
to  get  and  hold  what  he  can.  The  capitalist  has  the  same 
idea  of  free  competition  as  before  —  for  the  laborer. 
He  is  perfectly  aware  that  there  can  be  no  real  equality 
of  contract  between  men  who  are  unequal  in  condition, 
but  he  insists  on  the  maintenance  of  the  fiction.     In  order 


50  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

to  assure  the  continuance  of  unequal  conditions,  he  is 
always  importing  fresh  stocks  of  laborers  from  Europe  — 
in  defiance  or  evasion  of  the  statute  that  forbids  importa- 
tion of  foreign  laborers  under  contract  —  lest  the  com- 
petition should  not  be  "free"  enough;  and  he  contends 
strenuously  for  the  "open  shop"  so  that  no  union  may 
deprive  the  laborer  of  his  freedom  of  contract,  while  at 
the  same  time  he  demands  that  a  high  tariff  shall  pre- 
vent any  competition  with  his  products.  He  indignantly 
asserts  that  it  is  an  outrage  for  the  law  to  interfere  with 
his  business,  by  shortening  the  hours  of  labor  for  women, 
by  preventing  the  emplo>anent  of  small  children  in  his 
factories,  by  requiring  better  sanitation  of  workshops, 
and  the  like.  All  that  he  asks  —  he  is  a  reasonable  man 
—  is  to  be  let  alone,  and  left  to  manage  his  own  business 
in  his  own  way.  The  capitalist  has  developed  the  same 
views  as  the  anarchist  —  extremes  meet. 

in 

Capitahsm  thus  developed  in  the  nineteenth  century 
as  the  natural  mode  of  trade  —  a  necessary  organization 
of  the  machinery  of  commerce  that  must  be  developed 
if  the  world  was  to  progress.  Being  a  necessary  stage 
in  the  evolution  of  society,  it  is  to  be  looked  on  as  a  good, 
not  an  evil.  Capitalism  is  still  a  necessity  and  probably 
always  will  be  a  necessity.  But,  as  John  Stuart  Mill  re- 
marked, "Capital  is  necessary  to  production,  but  not 
the  capitalist."  The  community  really  creates  capital, 
not  the  individual;  should  not  capital  belong  to  the 
community,  then? 

SociaHsm  is  nothing  else  than  the  affirmative  answer  to 
this  question.     It  recognizes  the  evils  inherent  in  the 


MODERN  SOCIALISM  IN  FRANCE  51 

present  social  system,  and  desires  to  modify  the  system 
so  as  to  retain  all  that  is  good  and  avoid  the  evil  —  to 
better  social  conditions  in  general,  but  in  particular  the 
lot  of  the  workingman.  The  man  not  born  to  aflfluence 
in  the  modern  world  is  no  longer  a  slave,  as  in  the  Roman 
world,  nor  a  serf  as  in  the  feudal  world ;  he  is  a  hireling. 
There  remains  for  him  a  further  step  toward  emancipa- 
tion, by  becoming  a  free  producer  and  having  for  himself 
the  whole  product  of  his  toil.  At  present  a  laboring 
man's  family  consumes  but  one-tenth  of  what  he  is  capa- 
ble of  producing  when  regularly  employed.  Sociahsm 
proposes  to  insure  him  the  regular  employment  and 
permit  him  and  his  to  consume  ten-tenths  of  what  he 
produces. 

But  it  is  not  only  the  emancipation  of  the  laborer  that 
Sociahsm  professes  to  seek.  There  is  no  real  liberty  now 
an}^vhere,  except  for  the  comparatively  small  leisure  class 
who  are  able  to  hve  an  idle  life  at  the  expense  of  the 
world's  workers.  The  laborer  is  not  free  by  reason  of 
his  poverty ;  he  must  work  or  starve.  The  capitahst  is 
not  free  by  reason  of  his  wealth ;  he  must  work  or  see 
his  fortune  disintegrate.  Socialism  was  proposed  in  the 
first  instance,  and  is  still  urged,  as  the  system  that  will 
set  both  classes  free  —  not  absolutely,  for  absolute  free- 
dom is  not  good  for  man,  is  therefore  not  to  be  desired  for 
any,  but  free  in  the  sense  that  moderate  labor  would 
secure  to  all  men  means  enough  and  leisure  enough  to 
live  a  full,  rich,  worthy  life. 

It  is  not  surprising,  perhaps,  that  the  first  important 
growth  of  socialistic  theory  and  of  social  experiment 
should  have  occurred  in  P>ance.  This  was  the  country 
where  the  Revolution  began,  the  country  in  which  the 


52  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

greatest  results  were  expected  to  follow  that  immense 
social  and  political  upheaval.  It  was  believed  at  first 
that  not  merely  liberty  but  equality  had  been  secured. 
Now  began  that  great  development  of  modern  indus- 
trialism in  which  France  was  second  only  to  England. 
The  emancipated  third  estate  seized  its  opportunity, 
engaged  in  manufactures  and  trade,  and  rapidly  became 
wealthy.  A  new  privilege  grew  up  in  place  of  the  feudal 
privilege  that  had  been  destroyed,  the  privilege  of  wealth 
instead  of  the  privilege  of  birth.  The  m.an  whose  sole 
capital  was  his  hands  found  himself  at  an  increasing  dis- 
advantage, as  compared  with  the  many  who  possessed 
capital  in  money  or  plant  or  goods.  This  fourth  estate 
of  laborers  found  itself  not  advanced  a  pace  in  the  direc- 
tion of  real  equality  by  the  Revolution.  In  the  economic 
contest,  it  was  every  day  becoming  more  hopelessly  the 
"under  dog."  In  this  bitter  disappointment  we  find 
the  roots  of  French  Socialism. 

Saint-Simon  (1760-1825),  a  man  of  noble  birth,  who, 
like  Lafayette,  had  taken  an  honorable  part  in  our  Amer- 
ican war  of  Revolution,  abandoned  a  military  career  and 
devoted  himself  to  studies  that  had  for  their  declared 
object  "the  perfection  of  civilization."  He  took  no 
prominent  part  in  the  French  Revolution,  probably  be- 
cause of  his  noble  ancestry,  and  he  was  even  imprisoned 
for  a  time  on  account  of  the  suspicion  then  resting  on  all 
persons  of  noble  birth.  After  the  Revolution  he  acquired 
a  small  fortune  by  speculation  in  land,  and  at  the  age  of 
forty-three  entered  on  his  real  career  as  a  writer  and 
social  reformer.  His  small  property  was  soon  exhausted 
in  his  experiments,  and  during  his  later  years  he  lived  in 
poverty  and  want,  but  without  any  relaxation  of  his 


MODERN  SOCL\LISM   IN  FRANCE  53 

efforts  for  the  betterment  of  humanity.  His  fortitude 
and  devotion  to  a  cause  that  had  become  sacred  to  him 
were  deserving  of  wider  recognition  and  higher  reward. 

Saint-Simon  began  to  propound  his  views  in  181 7,  in 
a  series  of  books  and  pamphlets.  He  won  comparatively 
few  disciples,  but  he  made  contributions  of  great  and  per- 
manent value  to  the  literature  of  Socialism  and  to  its 
philosophy.  There  had  been  communistic  writers  and 
communists  in  France  before  him,  but  he  developed  the 
first  scheme  of  pure  Sociahsm.  In  doing  this,  he  opposed 
revolution  as  merely  destructive,  whereas  he  thought 
construction  to  be  the  thing  required.  He  urged  Louis 
XVIII  to  begin  the  new  order,  since  the  interests  of  roy- 
alty are  at  bottom  with  the  "industrials,"  or  the  world's 
producers,  and  opposed  to  the  interests  of  the  idle  class, 
or  "do-nothings."  This  will,  as  well  as  anything,  illus- 
trate the  impracticable  ideas  of  the  man. 

The  ideal  of  Saint-Simon  seems  to  have  been  an  in- 
dustrial state,  directed  by  scientific  research  and  com- 
petent leadership.  Society  would  be  organized  on  a  semi- 
military  principle,  with  gradations  of  rank  and  authority, 
a  social  hierarchy,  depending  on  efficiency  and  worth. 
For  he  and  his  followers  recognized  the  fact  that  there  is 
an  actual  inequality  in  men,  of  wliich  any  social  order 
must  take  account.  It  was  a  fundamental  principle  in 
his  scheme  that  the  products  of  labor  should  be  distrib- 
uted equitably  among  the  producers ;  but  that  would 
not  be  to  distribute  them  equally,  since  then  the  intelli- 
gent, the  energetic,  and  the  skilful  would  receive  no  more 
than  the  stupid,  the  slow,  the  lazy. 

How  the  leaders  should  be  selected  to  direct  production 
and  sec  that  the  product  was  equitably  distributed  was 


54  SOCIALISM  AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

never  clearly  pointed  out  by  him,  yet  this  is  evidently 
the  crucial  test  of  his  system.  If  selected  by  suffrage, 
what  guarantee  is  there  that  the  best  qualified  would  be 
chosen,  rather  than  the  most  popular  ?  And  if  the  best 
quahfied  are  not  chosen,  the  system  must  break  down. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  the  leaders  are  to  be  appointed 
for  their  fitness,  where  is  the  power  of  appointment  to 
be  lodged  ? 

Here  is  a  difficulty  that  we  shall  frequently  meet  in 
our  study  :  the  rock  upon  which  thus  far  all  cooperative 
enterprises  in  production  have  spKt,  is  equality.  Social- 
ism is,  in  theory  at  least,  the  subhmation  of  democracy. 
But  men  are  not  equal  in  abihty  and  capacity,  and  differ- 
entiation of  function  is  necessary  to  the  practical  success 
of  any  industrial  enterprise.  This  involves  the  subordi- 
nation of  some  to  others.  Absolute  democracy  is  im- 
possible in  industrialism,  unless  the  work  is  to  be  divided 
up  among  little  groups,  which  is  both  costly  and  ineffi- 
cient. Efficient  business  must  be  organized  on  the  hier- 
archical principle,  not  the  democratic.  Here  SociaHsm 
must  either  surrender  something  of  its  boasted  demo- 
cratic equality  or  meet  an  impasse. 

As  a  prehminary  to  the  establishment  of  the  system, 
Saint-Simon  demanded  the  destruction  of  the  remains  of 
privilege,  and  especially  of  inheritance,  by  the  operation 
of  which  not  only  wealth  but  misery  becomes  hereditary. 
Hitherto  man  has  been  exploited  by  his  fellow-man ;  the 
remedy  is  for  associated  man  to  exploit  the  earth.  Hence 
land,  capital,  and  the  instruments  of  labor  should  become 
common  property,  wealth  should  be  produced  by  the 
common  labors  of  all,  and  should  be  so  divided  that  the 
portion  of  each  should  correspond  to  his  capacity  and  so 


MODERN  SOCIALISM  IN  FRANCE  55 

equitably  reward  his  labors.  Women  should  be  included 
in  this  scheme  of  emancipation  and  be  made  the  equals 
of  men  in  every  respect,  Saint-Simon  did  not,  however, 
like  some  of  his  followers,  favor  the  abolition  of  marriage. 
On  the  contrary,  he  believed  that  he  was  striving  for  a 
new  sanctity  of  marriage,  by  making  unnecessary  the 
present  prostitution  of  women  under  the  form  of  legal 
marriage,  when  a  woman  sells  herself  for  a  home,  for 
wealth,  or  for  social  position.  He  would  have  marriage 
become  the  voluntary  union  of  two  completely  equal 
persons,  who,  because  of  their  equality,  would  seek  each 
other  for  no  reason  but  mutual  love ;  and  their  equality 
of  function  should  be  as  fully  recognized  after  marriage 
as  before.  Some  of  his  followers  advocated  "free  love  "  ; 
that  is,  unions  that  should  endure  only  so  long  as  mutual 
desire  for  union  endured ;  when  that  desire  should 
cease,  the  parties  would  separate  without  any  formality 
of  divorce. 

Saint-Simon  did  not  fully  work  out  his  principle  of 
collectivism,  which  does  not  seem  to  be  incompatible 
with  private  property,  provided  there  was  competent 
industrial  direction.  Many  of  the  details  of  his  system 
he  left  in  a  vague  and  inchoate  state.  He  is  to  be  looked 
upon  as  the  man  who  first  began  to  break  a  road  through 
an  unknown  tract  of  wilderness.  Some  of  his  ideas  have 
become  permanent  in  the  social  movement  and  literature  : 
the  dignity  and  sacredness  of  labor,  the  reverence  due 
to  woman,  the  duty  of  universal  peace.  The  contention 
of  his  followers  that  the  armies  of  Europe  should  be  em- 
ployed on  works  of  public  utility,  instead  of  the  destruc- 
tion of  both  property  and  life,  is  but  a  modern  echo  of 
the  Hebrew  prophet  who  foretold  a  day  when  — 


56  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

Nations  shall  beat  their  swords  into  plowshares, 
And  their  spears  into  pruning-hooks ; 
Nation  shall  not  lift  up  sword  against  nation, 
Neither  shall  they  learn  war  any  more. 

So  far  from  declaring  himself  hostile  to  Christianity, 
Saint-Simon  called  his  system  the  New  Christianity, 
The  new  social  order  would  derive  all  its  morality  imme- 
diately from  the  principle  of  primitive  Christianity : 
men  ought  to  regard  each  other  as  brothers.  In  its  mod- 
ernized form  this  will  read,  "Religion  must  aid  society 
in  its  chief  purpose,  which  is  the  most  rapid  development 
in  the  lot  of  the  poor."  The  social  question  thus  becomes 
the  essence  of  religion.  It  is  a  noble  conception,  that  will 
make  the  name  of  Saint-Simon  immortal.  His  last  words 
were,  ''The  future  is  ours." 

IV 

Contemporary  with  Saint-Simon,  but  unknown  to  him, 
was  another  remarkable  French  socialist.  Saint-Simon 
was  an  aristocrat  by  birth,  tracing  his  lineage  back  to 
Charlemagne;  Charles  Fourier  (1772-1837)  was  a  man 
of  the  people.  Saint-Simon  advocated  governmental 
leadership  and  authority ;  Fourier  urged  individual  ini- 
tiative. One  made  the  State  the  social  unit ;  the  other 
would  find  the  social  unit  in  local  groups.  One  sought 
progress  along  the  line  of  development  in  the  past,  and  so 
was  more  in  accord  with  the  modern  evolutionary  philos- 
ophy ;  the  other  could  see  in  the  past  nothing  but  a  series 
of  costly  blunders,  and  would  break  with  it  altogether 
and  begin  anew.  The  motive  power  in  Saint-Simon  was 
a  warm  heart,  in  Fourier  a  clear  brain.     This  does  not 


MODERN  SOCL\LISM   IN   FRANCE  57 

imply  that  Fourier  was  more  practical  in  his  thinking, 
only  that  he  was  more  logical  and  consistent. 

Fourier  began  to  write  earlier  than  Saint-Simon  (1808), 
but  was  later  in  getting  a  hearing,  nor  did  he  ever  have 
a  large  following.  He  did  not  so  much  wish  to  gather 
disciples  or  form  a  party,  as  to  convince  a  few  men  of 
property,  who  would  be  ready  to  put  his  theories  into 
operation.  Once  they  were  tried,  he  firmly  believed  that 
their  success  would  lead  to  general  imitation ;  and  so  the 
new  order  would  be  naturally  brought  about.  For  the 
last  ten  years  of  his  Hfe  he  is  said  to  have  waited  in  his 
house  every  day,  at  noon,  for  the  coming  of  the  wealthy 
capitalist  who  should  thus  become  the  benefactor  of  his 
race.  Such  faith  is  pathetic,  even  though  it  stamps  the 
man  as  an  impractical  dreamer.  It  enables  us  to  com- 
prehend the  inherent  weakness  of  his  socialistic  specula- 
tions —  his  too  sanguine  confidence  in  progress,  his 
continual  and  fatal  underestimate  of  the  unregenerate 
residuum  in  human  nature. 

Harmony  is  the  law  of  the  universe,  said  Fourier,  the 
law  of  life.  The  present  social  organization,  which  we 
call  civilization,  is  a  system  of  oppression  and  repression, 
which  necessarily  produces  horrible  discord.  To  restore 
Harmony,  new  social  arrangements  are  necessary  that 
will  give  free  play  to  all  of  man's  propensities.  This  can 
be  done  only  by  combinations  of  suitable  numbers  in  com- 
munities, which  he  called  phalanxes,  housed  in  suitable 
buildings  or  phalansteries.  Each  phalange  should  con- 
sist of  not  less  than  four  hundred  families,  or  eighteen 
hundred  persons ;  a  larger  number  would  produce  dis- 
cord, a  smaller  number  would  not  allow  sufficient  com- 
binations.     It  would  be  a  waste  of  time  to  consider  the 


58  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

elaborate  mathematical  computations  and  philosophical 
speculations  by  which  these  particular  numbers  were 
justified ;  they  are  of  interest  only  as  throwing  light  on 
the  operations  of  Fourier's  mind. 

Assuming  his  ''proofs,"  let  us  go  on  to  the  further  elab- 
oration of  his  scheme.  Each  phalange  would  occupy 
a  square  league  of  land,  and  be  not  only  self-supporting, 
but  self-sufficient.  It  would  have  its  own  farms,  its  own 
factories,  its  own  stores.  The  phalanstery,  or  common 
dwelling,  would  have  every  convenience  and  beauty  — 
it  would  cost  no  more  to  build  a  palace  for  these  four 
hundred  families  than  to  build  four  hundred  small  and 
uncomfortable  houses.  The  utmost  freedom  of  life  would 
prevail,  and  restraint  would  be  reduced  to  a  minimum. 
The  relation  of  the  sexes  would  be  settled  in  accordance 
with  these  general  principles,  and  would  be  free  unions 
founded  on  "elective  affinity." 

Some  internal  arrangement  of  the  phalange  would, 
of  course,  be  necessary  to  ensure  Harmony.  Those  hav- 
ing similar  tastes  would  naturally  form  a  "series,"  of 
seven  to  nine  members,  and  several  series  of  related  tastes 
would  unite  to  form  a  "group."  Each  group  would 
undertake  some  one  kind  of  labor.  All  labor,  Fourier 
declared,  is  pleasant,  provided  a  man  is  not  compelled 
to  do  work  that  he  does  not  like,  but  is  permitted  to 
choose  his  occupation :  — 

The  labor  we  delight  in  physics  pain. 

He  would  have  agreed  heartily  with  the  English  socialist, 
William  Morris:  "It  is  right  and  necessary  that  all  men 
should  have  work  to  do  which  shall  be  worth  doing,  and 
be  of  itself  pleasant  to  do;   and  which  should  be  done 


MODERN   SOCL\LISM   IN  FRANCE  59 

under  such  conditions  as  would  make  it  neither  over- 
wearisome  nor  over-anxious."  In  the  phalanxes,  there- 
fore, every  person  would  be  free  to  join  which  group  he 
pleased,  or  to  change  from  group  to  group.  A  generous 
rivalry  between  groups  would  induce  efficiency  and 
stimulate  production.  In  order  to  secure  proper  dis- 
tribution of  labor,  so  that  too  many  persons  would  not 
choose  a  single  occupation,  Fourier  would  divide  labor 
into  three  classes  :  necessary,  useful,  and  agreeable.  The 
highest  reward  should  be  paid  to  those  who  do  the  neces- 
sary work,  and  the  lowest  for  the  agreeable ;  this  would 
accord  with  equity,  since  the  necessary  tasks  are  more  or 
less  disagreeable,  while  the  agreeable  labor  is  in  large 
part  its  own  reward. 

It  was  the  opinion  of  Fourier  and  his  disciples  that 
there  would  be  a  great  increase,  not  only  of  happiness, 
but  of  culture  and  the  refinements  of  living,  as  a  conse- 
quence of  the  phalanstery.  And  why  should  not  this  be 
one  of  the  aims  of  Socialism  ?  If  refinement  is  a  good 
thing  in  a  countess,  why  not  in  her  cook  ?  If  good  man- 
ners are  desirable  in  a  miUionnaire,  why  not  in  the  mason 
who  builds  his  house  ?  But  how,  in  the  present  social 
conditions,  are  cook  and  mason  to  acquire  the  refinements 
of  thought  and  manner  that  are  possible  to  the  possessors 
of  titles  and  millions  ?  In  a  sociaUzed  State  the  gap 
between  the  extremes  of  society  will  be  closed  up ;  there 
will  be  leisure  and  culture  for  all  who  care  to  avail  them- 
selves of  opportunities  of  self-improvement.  No  so- 
cialist advocates  the  reign  of  the  physical  and  intellec- 
tual superman  at  the  cost  of  the  worker.  To  be  sure, 
differences  will  remain  :  a  lapidary  can  polish  a  diamond, 
but  not  a  lump  of  putty.     Socialism  cannot  change  na- 


6o  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

tures,  perhaps,  but  it  can  offer  opportunities.  The  higher 
Hfe  will  be  opened  to  all,  and  Hved  by  all  who  are  capable 
of  it,  and  the  number  of  such  is  greater  than  many  suspect. 

Besides  increasing  production,  the  phalange  was  ex- 
pected to  avoid  the  waste  caused  by  industrial  and  com- 
mercial competition.  Fourier  dwelt  less  on  this  advan- 
tage than  the  case  warranted,  for  it  is  one  of  the  strongest 
economic  arguments  in  favor  of  Socialism.  The  present 
waste  in  competitive  production  is  great,  and  recognition 
of  that  fact  has  stimulated  the  formation  of  the  great 
corporations  and  trusts.  The  elimination  of  small  con- 
cerns and  the  concentration  of  industries  into  a  few 
powerful  corporations,  or  sometimes  into  a  single  one,  has 
been  accompanied  by  a  vast  amount  of  lawlessness,  in- 
justice, and  suffering,  but  its  economic  results  have  been 
wholly  good.  Yet  far  greater  than  the  waste  of  produc- 
tion is  the  waste  of  distribution,  as  becomes  evident  when  * 
one  considers  the  enormous  loss  implied  by  the  vast  num- 
ber of  retail  shops.  Each  proprietor  of  such  a  shop  must 
at  least  get  a  living  out  of  his  business,  and  the  cost  of  sup- 
porting his  family  is  saddled  on  the  consumer.  It  is  the 
economy  of  having  a  hundred  separate  shops  under  a 
single  roof,  each  doing  a  separate  business  but  all  doing 
business  in  harmony,  because  under  the  direction  of  one 
mind,  that  makes  the  department  store  so  great  a  success 
as  a  distributing  agency,  and  secures  not  only  a  large 
aggregate  profit  to  the  proprietor,  but  better  wages  and 
shorter  hours  to  the  employed,  and  lower  prices  and  better 
goods  to  the  consumer,  than  a  multitude  of  small  shops 
scattered  about  a  city. 

The  department  store  is  thus  a  great  object-lesson  of 
the  advantages  of  socialized  distribution,  the  full  value 


MODERN   SOCIALISM   IN  FRANCE  6l 

of  which  does  not  yet  accrue  to  society,  because  the  pro- 
prietor now  takes  in  the  form  of  profit  an  undue  share  of 
the  economies  effected.  Add  to  the  economic  gain  of 
such  business  methods  the  productiveness  of  those  now 
uselessly  employed  in  purely  competitive  effort,  and  it 
becomes  evident  that  the  wealth  of  society  might  be  in- 
definitely increased  by  a  complete  socialization  of  dis- 
tribution. This  conclusion  is  strengthened  when  we 
consider  another  large  item  of  expense  in  the  present 
system  of  distribution :  the  cost  of  finding  a  market. 
This  is  now  done  by  employing  skilled  salesmen,  or  by 
equally  skilled  advertising,  or  by  a  combination  of  both 
methods.  These  methods  are  very  expensive,  but  ab- 
solutely necessary  as  business  is  now  conducted.  It  is 
a  maxim  in  business  that  "any  fool  can  make  goods,  but 
it  takes  a  smart  man  to  sell  them."  A  high  quality  of 
brains  and  training  are  required  to  find  a  market,  and 
brains  come  higher  than  goods  in  the  world's  mart.  This 
large  item  of  expense,  now  paid  by  the  consumer  in  the 
ultimate  price  of  whatever  he  buys,  would  be  practically 
eliminated  by  socialized  distribution,  and  the  great  army 
of  bright  men  and  women  now  engaged  in  marketing 
products  would  be  added  to  the  ranks  of  productive  la- 
borers, to  the  vast  gain  of  the  world  in  wealth.  With  all 
his  philosophizing,  P'ourier  failed  to  give  adequate  weight 
to  these  things. 

Probably  with  the  hope  of  attracting  his  capitalist  to 
advance  means  for  a  practical  test  of  his  scheme,  Fourier 
made  a  distinct  place  in  his  theory  for  private  property. 
His  plan  for  the  distribution  of  profits  was  rather  com- 
I)lcx.  A  minimum  should  be  set  aside  for  every  member 
of  the  phalange,  sufiicient  for  the  comfortable  support  of 


62  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

all.  The  surplus,  which  he  believed  would  be  enormous, 
should  be  divided  in  the  proportion  of  live-twelfths  to 
labor,  four-twelfths  to  capital,  and  three-fifths  to  talent. 
Saint-Simon's  maxim  was :  labor  according  to  capacity, 
reward  according  to  service ;  Fourier's  was :  labor  ac- 
cording to  capacity,  reward  according  to  services,  capital, 
and  talent.  In  the  practical  working  of  a  socialistic 
system,  we  might  reasonably  expect  these  distinctions 
to  disappear ;  payment  according  to  services  might  en- 
dure, but  special  favors  to  capital  and  talent  w^ould 
almost  certainly  be  refused  after  a  time.  Saint-Simon's 
formula  promises  better  as  a  working  principle  than 
Fourier's. 

Though  the  expected  capitalist  did  not  come  forward 
during  Fourier's  lifetime,  it  is  a  pleasure  to  record  that 
after  his  death  his  faith  had  in  part  its  reward.  A  rich 
manufacturer  ^  named  Godin  established  a  community 
at  Guise  for  his  work-people  on  essentially  Fourier's  prin- 
ciples, though  with  some  modifications  of  detail.  The 
workers  are  housed  in  one  huge  building,  with  many  of 
the  comforts  and  elegancies  that  Fourier  prophesied,  and 
many  of  the  predicted  benefits  of  such  association  have 
been  realized.  The  essential  condition  of  success  in  the 
experiment  was,  however,  that  M.  Godin  should  reserve 
to  himself  a  large  part  of  the  power  of  direction ;  and,  like 
the  prudent  business  man  that  he  was,  he  did  this.  He 
thus  solved  the  crucial  problem  of  a  socialistic  experiment, 
the  securing  of  competent  oversight.     Qualified  directors 

^  The  Guise  community  can  hardly  be  reckoned  an  instance  of  the  suc- 
cess of  pure  Fourierism,  for  it  was  one  of  his  pet  theories  that  agriculture 
is  the  normal  and  chief  occupation  of  a  regenerated  society,  in  which 
manufactures  would  be  reduced  to  a  minimum.  The  Guise  community 
is  devoted  exclusively  to  manufactures. 


MODERN   SOCIALISM   IN  FRANCE  63 

of  business  rise  to  the  top  under  the  present  system 
of  competition  by  a  natural  process  of  eliminating  the 
failures  —  the  weak  men  go  to  the  wall,  the  strong  men 
succeed.  It  seems  a  cruel  process,  but  it  is  at  least  effec- 
tive. If  the  world  is  to  go  on,  somehow  the  strong  men 
must  control  affairs,  either  as  now  by  a  stern  fight  in 
which  they  conquer  their  rivals,  or  by  some  process  of 
testing  and  promotion  that  will  ensure  the  same  result. 
M.  Godin  was  in  this  case  the  strong  man  who  got  to  the 
front  and  stayed  there,  and  his  experiment  was  reason- 
ably successful.  Socialistic  communities  that  have  fallen 
into  the  hands  of  weak  conductors,  or  have  had  no  con- 
ductor, have  uniformly  failed. 

On  the  whole,  Fourier's  contribution  to  the  cause  of 
Socialism  was  mainly  through  the  indirect  influence  of 
certain  of  his  teachings.  His  ingenious  and  elaborate 
Utopia  was  not  convincing  in  its  totality ;  it  too  utterly 
disregarded  the  patent  facts  of  human  nature  as  at  present 
constituted,^  and  it  was  on  these  reefs  that  most  of  the 
actual  experiments  in  Fourierism  came  to  grief,  —  ego- 
tism, selfishness,  laziness.  His  critique  of  existing 
institutions  was  often  acute,  and  he  pointed  out  effec- 
tively the  economic  benefits  of  socialized  production  and 
distribution.  Subsequent  experience,  as  far  as  it  has 
gone,  has  made  good  all  his  contentions  under  these  heads. 

'  It  takes  a  soul 
To  move  a  body  :  it  takes  a  high-souled  man 
To  move  the  masses,  even  to  a  cleaner  stj'e  : 
It  takes  the  ideal,  to  blow  a  hair's  breadth  off 
The  dust  of  the  actual.     Ah,  your  Fouriers  failed, 
Because  not  poets  enough  to  understand 
That  life  develops  from  within. 

—  Mrs.  Browning,  "  Aurora  Leigh,"  Book  II. 


64  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

He  was  also  the  first  to  describe  with  literary  effectiveness 
the  unnecessary  hardships  of  labor  and  the  evil  conse- 
quences of  unnecessary  toil.  This  part  of  his  teachings 
has  had  a  distinctly  traceable  influence  on  the  modern 
factory  laws  for  the  protection  of  the  laborer,  even  against 
himself,  and  the  shortening  of  the  hours  of  work.  Sani- 
tary reforms  in  factories,  including  the  prohibition  of 
child  labor  and  the  restrictions  thrown  about  the  employ- 
ment of  women,  had  their  beginning  in  the  same  source. 
It  would  be  unfair  to  credit  Fourier  with  the  whole 
inspiration  of  legislation  of  this  character.  Much  is  due 
to  the  advance  in  medical  science,  and  to  the  quickening 
of  the  public  conscience  as  popular  knowledge  has  in- 
creased, on  the  one  hand  of  the  existing  evils,  and  on  the 
other  of  the  possibility  of  remedying  them.  Enlightened 
self-interest  has  also  played  its  part  here ;  the  well-to-do 
have  come  to  realize  that  if  factories  are  permitted  to 
be  breeding-places  of  disease,  they  will  themselves  have 
to  pay  no  small  part  of  the  ultimate  penalty.  And  above 
all,  we  must  take  into  account  the  effect  of  those  Chris- 
tian ethics  that  Fourier  so  contemptuously  rejected. 

v 

Both  the  men  whom  we  have  thus  far  studied  believed 
that  Socialism  was  to  come  by  way  of  evolution.  Louis 
Blanc  (1811-1882)  was  the  first  to  advocate  revolutionary 
Socialism,  though  it  was  revolution  without  violence. 
Saint-Simon  divorced  economics  from  politics,  and  Fou- 
rier followed  his  example ;  they  appealed  to  ideas,  not  to 
political  parties.  Blanc  saw  that  if  Saint-Simon's  notion 
of  governmental  direction  of  production  was  ever  to  be 
realized,  there  must  first  of  all  be  a  change  of  political 


MODERN  SOCIALISM  IN  FRANCE  65 

institutions.  It  was  plain  to  him,  as  it  had  not  been  to 
his  predecessor,  that  neither  Louis  XVIII  nor  any  other 
French  monarch  could  be  rationally  expected  to  lead,  or 
even  to  countenance,  such  an  experiment.  A  govern- 
ment representative  of  the  people,  and  so  in  harmony  with 
the  people,  must  be  secured  first  of  all. 

In  his  "Organization  of  Labor"  (1840)  Blanc  effec- 
tively criticised  the  evils  of  competition.  Soul  and  body, 
he  said,  must  be  developed  together ;  moral  and  material 
progress  are  mutually  interdependent.  Man  cannot 
live  by  bread  alone,  but  he  must  have  bread  to  live.  The 
measure  of  man's  needs  is,  those  means  that  are  required 
for  his  complete  development,  mental,  moral,  physical. 
A  society  that  does  not  guarantee  to  every  member  of  it 
his  needs  is  a  failure.  The  present  individualism,  "taking 
every  man  outside  of  society,  renders  him  the  sole  and 
exclusive  judge  of  that  which  surrounds  him,  gives  him 
an  exalted  sentiment  of  his  own  rights  without  indicating 
to  him  his  duties,  abandons  him  to  his  own  powers  and 
proclaims  laissez  faire  as  the  only  rule  of  government." 
The  result  is  want  and  misery,  which  make  symmetrical 
development  impossible.  This  necessitates  a  new  organ- 
ization of  society.  But  social  reform  is  impossible  with- 
out political ;  successful  Socialism  must  be  State  Social- 
ism. Therefore  the  State  must  be  reorganized  on  a  truly 
democratic  basis  as  a  first  step. 

As  the  poor  cannot  combine  to  produce  for  themselves, 
the  State  must  be  the  banker  of  the  poor,  furnish  the 
instruments  of  production,  and  emancipate  the  prole- 
tariat. This  it  can  do  by  establishing  social  workshops 
{atliers  sociaux),  for  the  first  year  assigning  each  laborer 
to  his  place,  according  to  his  ability.     During  this  year 


66  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

the  workers  will  become  acquainted  with  each  other,  and 
thereafter  will  be  able  to  elect  their  own  chiefs.  The 
State  will  grant  its  credit  to  these  workshops,  without 
interest.  The  loans  will  be  repaid  from  railways,  mines, 
and  other  public  enterprises.  Gradually  private  indus- 
trial concerns  will  be  absorbed,  but  none  are  to  be  forced 
to  join  the  movement.  The  social  workshop,  having 
capital  supplied  gratis,  attracting  the  best  workmen, 
possessing  the  advantages  of  a  vast  organization,  would 
soon  make  competition  by  private  capital  impossible. 
Thus  the  socialistic  State  will  be  formed,  and  the  best 
interests  of  all  the  people,  rich  as  well  as  poor,  will  be 
conserved.^ 

But  how  is  the  product  of  socialized  labor  to  be  dis- 
tributed ?  Men  differ  in  powers  and  abiHties,  as  Blanc 
was  quick  to  recognize,  at  the  same  time  contending  that 
this  difference  is  the  measure  of  their  obligation  to  society. 
"The  more  a  man  can,  the  more  he  ought;  and  this  is  the 
meaning  of  those  beautiful  words  of  the  gospel :  '  Who- 
soever will  be  chief  among  you,  let  him  be  your  servant.' 
Whence  the  axiom,  From  every  man  according  to  his 
faculties ;  that  is  our  duty."  At  first  Blanc  was  inclined 
to  admit  Saint-Simon's  principle  of  pay  graduated  accord- 
ing to  services;  later  he  maintained  that  exceptional 
ability  must  find  its  reward  in  exceptional  service.  Not 
what  one  gives  to  society,  but  what  one  needs,  is  the  true 
principle  to  govern  distribution.     Every  man  truly  needs 

1  Yet  the  system  Blanc  had  in  mind  seems  to  be  distinct  from  what  has 
since  been  called  State  Socialism  —  it  might  rather  be  called  Group  So- 
cialism, the  common  ownership  of  the  means  of  production,  not  by  society 
as  a  whole,  but  by  associations  of  workers  in  each  trade.  Its  affinities 
are  greater  with  the  methods  now  advocated  by  Kropotkin  than  with  the 
theories  of  Marx. 


MODERN   SOCIALISM   IN  FRANCE  67 

what  will  enable  him  to  derive  the  greatest  possible  ad- 
vantage from  his  faculties,  so  far  as  this  will  not  injure 
others.  The  formula  of  perfect  justice  therefore  is,  that 
every  one  "produces  according  to  his  faculties,  and  con- 
sumes according  to  his  wants." 

But  who  should  decide  what  are  the  wants  of  each  in- 
dividual, and  therefore  settle  the  amount  of  his  compensa- 
tion ?  This  problem  Blanc  did  not  attempt  to  solve  — 
perhaps  he  felt  that  it  would  find  its  own  solution  in  the 
different  wants  of  the  workers,  each  gravitating  to  his 
own  place  and  his  own  kind  of  enjo}'ment.  Some  of  his 
followers  held  that  the  material  needs  of  all  men  are  the 
same  under  normal  conditions.  Abnormal  conditions, 
even  in  the  present  order,  are  recognized  as  requiring 
abnormal  methods,  which  now  take  the  form  of  "charity," 
but  should  rather  be  a  form  of  justice.  Blanc  himself 
believed  that  the  ideas  and  characters  of  men  would  be 
greatly  changed  by  new  social  conditions  and  new  edu- 
cation, which  is  unquestionably  true,  but  it  remains  a 
serious  problem  whether  his  system  would  be  workable 
without  a  greater  change  in  ideas  and  character  than  can 
reasonably  be  expected  to  occur  in  a  generation  or  two 
through  mere  betterment  of  social  conditions. 

For  it  is  the  experience  of  mankind  thus  far  that  in- 
crease of  material  well-being  does  not  of  itself  produce 
any  marked  moral  advance.  The  morality  of  the  well- 
to-do  class  may  perhaps  be  conceded  to  be  somewhat 
better  than  that  of  the  proletariat,  but  the  contrast  can- 
not be  called  a  glaring  one  ;  while  the  morality  of  the  new 
rich  in  America  is  notoriously  bad,  and  that  of  the  heredi- 
tary rich  in  Europe  is  even  worse.  The  student  of  man- 
kind finds  little  support,  cither  in  history  or  in  observa- 


68  SOCIALISM  AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

tion,  for  the  theory  that  men  are  likely  to  be  made  better 
by  giving  them  all  that  they  desire.  That  is  a  sure  way 
to  spoil  a  child ;  can  it  be  a  good  way  to  make  a  man  ? 
Wealth  has  made  many  a  man  worse,  and  few  men  better. 
Prosperity  is  a  severer  test  of  character  than  adversity. 

The  teachings  of  Blanc  had  much  to  do  with  the  pro- 
ducing of  the  revolution  of  1848,  which  swept  away 
French  monarchy  and  undid  the  mischief  of  the  reaction 
that  had  followed  Waterloo.  Blanc  played  a  part  in  the 
revolution  sufficiently  important  to  secure  him  a  place  in 
the  new  government,  but  he  was  not  a  leading  spirit.  His 
colleagues  felt  compelled  to  begin  some  half-hearted  ex- 
periments in  the  direction  of  establishing  social  work- 
shops under  State  patronage.  The  capital  advanced  for 
the  purpose  was  insufficient,  the  direction  was  incapable, 
and  the  experiments  failed.  One  can  hardly  resist  the 
conclusion,  from  all  the  evidence,  that  they  were  not 
intended  to  succeed. 

All  measures  of  socialistic  reform  meet  with  a  common 
reception.  First  they  are  ridiculed  and  criticised,  de- 
clared to  be  spoliative,  vicious,  criminal,  and  their  au- 
thors are  overwhelmed  with  vituperation  and  opprobrium. 
As  they  gain  a  hearing  in  spite  of  these  tactics,  the  meas- 
ures are  next  pronounced  well-intentioned  but  imprac- 
ticable, and  their  authors  are  described  as  dreamers  and 
harmless  lunatics.  Still  they  gain  adherents,  until  the 
conviction  forces  itself  on  those  in  power  that  something 
must  really  be  done ;  whereupon  the  wily  politician  pro- 
fesses himself  to  be  converted  to  reform,  takes  the  meas- 
ures in  hand,  and  does  his  best  to  emasculate  them  and 
make  them  worthless.  If,  in  spite  of  him,  they  succeed, 
he  claims  all  the  credit  for  proposing  and  enacting  them 


MODERN  SOCIALISM  IN   FRANCE  69 

into  law ;  while  if  they  fail,  as  is  more  likely,  he  casts  all 
the  blame  on  the  original  authors. 

VI 

Socialism  has  not  made  the  progress  in  France  that 
was  anticipated  by  these  forerunners,  yet  it  is  to-day  a  for- 
midable movement.  Its  slow  growth  for  two  generations 
was  due  to  its  prevailing  Utopian  character.  French 
socialists  demanded  that  an  artificial  society  should  be 
created  by  a  ruling  class  that  did  not  desire  it,  for  the 
benefit  of  a  lower  class  then  incapable  of  doing  anything 
effective  for  themselves.  The  earlier  theories  were  weak 
on  the  constructive  side ;  to  shatter  and  remould  society 
was  the  ideal  of  Saint-Simon  and  Fourier,  but  they  were 
capable  only  of  shattering. 

The  common  weakness  of  the  systems  that  we  have 
examined  was  that  they  were  based  on  abstract  truths. 
In  the  estimation  of  men  like  Fourier,  it  was  only  neces- 
sary to  take  a  principle,  assumed  or  believed  to  be  an 
"eternal  truth,"  and  from  this  to  derive,  by  logical  deduc- 
tion, an  entire  system.  So  the  details  could  be  demon- 
strated like  a  proposition  of  Euclid,  it  was  held  that  men 
must  accept  them.  That  such  a  system  could  fail  at  any 
point  in  practical  trial  was  to  them  unthinkable.  In 
short,  in  its  beginnings,  modern  Socialism  harked  back 
to  medieval  scholasticism  and  its  deductive  method,  and 
was  therefore  in  sharp  contrast,  even  in  active  conflict, 
with  the  principle  of  induction,  on  which  modern  thought 
is  builded.  The  method  was  antiquated,  the  conclusions 
worthless. 

It  is  probable  that  the  general  hostility  of  the  French 
socialists  to  religion  and  marriage  retarded  the  accep- 


70  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

tance  of  their  theories.  There  was  a  healthy  conviction 
among  Frenchmen  that  "free  love,"  ostensibly  proposed 
for  the  freedom  and  elevation  of  woman,  really  meant  her 
degradation  and  enslavement.  The  probable  attitude  of 
man  toward  woman  in  the  ideal  social  order  pictured  by 
Fourier  has  been  adequately  described  by  Tennyson  :  — 

He  will  hold  thee,  when  his  passion  shall  have  spent  its 

novel  force, 
Something  better  than  his  dog,  a  little  dearer  than  his  horse. 

Marriage  dissoluble  at  will  could  hardly  fail  to  reduce 
woman  once  more  to  her  Oriental  position,  the  slave 
of  man's  passions.  It  would  give  her  freedom  - —  yes, 
the  freedom  of  the  harlot,  without  the  harlot's  hire  ! 
That  freedom  is  hers  now,  whenever  she  is  ready  to  sacri- 
fice for  it  all  decency  and  all  virtue.  The  only  defence 
of  woman's  purity,  the  only  protection  of  her  weakness, 
the  only  guarantee  of  her  honor  and  dignity,  is  indis- 
soluble marriage.  She  will  be  the  chief  sufferer,  if  the 
specious  but  deceptive  proffer  of  a  larger  liberty  persuades 
her  to  abandon  this  citadel  of  safety.  All  her  interests 
demand  that  the  bond  of  matrimony  should  be  made 
more  strict,  rather  than  loosened.^ 

The  last  two  decades  have  witnessed  a  marked  progress 
of  socialists  as  a  power  to  be  reckoned  with  in  French 
politics.     In  the  present  chamber  of  Deputies  (1910)  they 

^  It  is  but  fair  to  point  out  that  French  Socialism  has  in  practice  been 

better  than  its  theories.  When  the  sociahsts  obtained  control  of  the 
municipality  of  Lille,  some  years  ago,  they  established  a  free  marriage 
service,  the  municipality  paying  all  fees.  Thousands  of  marriages  fol- 
lowed with  the  accompanying  legitimation  of  children  —  a  clear  proof 
of  the  truth  of  assertions  often  made  before  the  experiment,  that  the 
prevalence  of  illicit  unions  had  been  due  to  poverty  rather  than  to 
immorality. 


MODERN   SOCIALISM  IN   FRANCE  7 1 

have  76  votes,  of  which  53  are  in  the  United  Sociahst 
party.  Besides  these,  many  of  the  Radicals  (246)  are 
socialists  in  all  but  name,  and  may  usually  be  relied  on 
to  vote  with  the  socialists  on  all  practical  measures.  The 
foremost  of  their  leaders,  Jules  Guesde,  has  risen  from 
the  ranks  of  the  workingmen.  Since  founding  L'Egalite 
in  1877,  he  has  been  a  great  force  among  his  class  and  in 
public  affairs.  He  rejects  the  older  gospel  of  barricades 
and  bullets,  and  advocates  organized  industrial  and  po- 
litical action  as  the  means  of  progress.  "The  Social  La- 
bor Congress,"  which  first  met  at  Marseilles  in  1879, 
was  largely  his  creation,  and  has  been  a  chief  agency  of 
sociaKstic  advance. 

Jean  Leon  Jaures,  who  divides  with  Guesde  the  leader- 
ship of  the  socialists,  is  an  "intellectual,"  not  a  working- 
man.  He  was  graduated  at  the  head  of  his  class  in  the 
Ecole  Normale  Superieure,  and  has  twice  been  professor 
of  philosophy  at  Toulouse.  He  began  his  pubhc  career 
as  a  moderate  Republican,  but  was  elected  to  the  Cham- 
ber of  Deputies  in  1S93  as  an  avowed  socialist.  Acknowl- 
edged to  be  one  of  the  chief  orators  of  the  Chamber,  and 
a  writer  of  equal  eminence,  he  is  a  man  of  mark  among 
the  ablest  in  France.  For  some  time  the  socialists  were 
divided  into  several  factions,  and  there  was  even  a  serious 
difference  between  Guesde  and  Jaures,  but  there  is  now 
practical  union,  and  at  times  their  party  has  had  the  con- 
trolling voice  in  the  conduct  of  the  State.  If  they  con- 
tinue to  maintain  their  hold  on  the  electorate,  the  social- 
ist Deputies  will  be  able  in  the  near  future  to  obtain  many 
substantial  measures  of  social  reform. 


Ill 

LASSALLE:  THE   FIRST   STAGE   OF  GERMAN 

SOCIALISM 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Sources : — 
Lassalle,  Open  Letter  to  the  National  Labor  Association  of  Ger- 
many, "International  Library."     New  York,  1889. 

,  The  Working-man's  Programme,  ib. 

,  Science  and  the  Working-man,  ib. 

Biographical  and  expository  :  — 
DawsoxN,  Lassalle  and  German  Socialism,  "Social  Science  Series." 
igo2. 
-,  Bismarck  and  State  Socialism,  ib. 


Brandes,  Ferdinand  Lassalle.     New  York,  1911. 
Bernstein,  Lassalle  as  a  Social  Reformer.    New  York,  1902. 


Ill 

LASSALLE  :    THE   FIRST   STAGE   OF   GERMAN   SOCIALISM 

Two  men  have  almost  equal  claims  to  be  considered 
the  founders  of  German  Socialism :  Karl  Marx  and 
Ferdinand  Lassalle.  There  were  some  striking  parallels 
in  their  lives.  Both  were  of  Hebrew  descent ;  both  were 
educated  at  German  universities  and  looked  forward  to 
the  usual  career  of  student  and  scholar  in  their  native 
land,  with  a  professorship  and  the  esteem  of  the  learned 
as  its  reward.  Both  became  interested  in  the  welfare  of 
the  working-class,  though  their  birth  and  interests  at- 
tached them  rather  to  the  upper  classes ;  and  both  sacri- 
ficed their  career  and  prospects  for  what  they  deemed 
a  sacred  cause. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  these  parallels,  the  two  men  were  quite 
different  in  character.  Marx  was  by  nature  a  scholar, 
philosopher,  thinker,  only  by  chance  a  man  of  action,  and 
never  quite  at  home  in  practical  affairs ;  while  Lassalle, 
though  not  without  capacity  for  abstract  thought,  was 
by  nature  an  orator,  agitator,  organizer,  politician.  Las- 
salle was  intensely  German,  Marx  was  cosmopolitan. 
Marx  was  the  elder  of  the  two  by  nearly  two  decades, 
and  had  made  public  some  of  his  chief  ideas,  though  not 
in  their  fully  elaborated  form,  before  Lassalle  began  to 
write.  Yet  Lassalle  was  the  first  to  organize  a  party. 
His  Universal  German  Laborers'  Union,  out  of  which 
grew  the  Social  Democracy  of  Germany,  was  founded 

75 


76  SOCIALISM  AND  THE    ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

in  Leipzig  in  1863 ;  while  the  International  Working- 
man's  Association,  which  was  the  child  of  Marx's  brain, 
had  its  first  meeting  in  London  in  1864. 


Of  the  two  men,  Lassalle  is  without  doubt  the  more 
striking  personage.  Of  his  personal  charm  and  intellec- 
tual gifts,  Bismarck  bore  testimony  in  a  speech  delivered 
in  the  Reichstag,  in  1878,  which  made  a  great  sensation 
in  Germany  at  the  time :  — 

I  met  Lassalle  three  or  four  times.  Our  relations  were  not 
of  a  political  nature  —  politically  he  had  nothing  that  he 
could  offer  me.  He  attracted  me  extraordinarily  as  a  private 
man.  Lassalle  was  one  of  the  most  gifted  and  amiable  men 
with  whom  I  have  ever  associated  —  a  man  who  was  ambi- 
tious on  a  large  scale,  but  not  the  least  of  a  republican.  He 
had  a  very  marked  inclination  towards  a  national  monarchy ; 
the  idea  towards  the  attainment  of  which  his  efforts  were 
directed  was  the  German  Empire,  and  in  this  we  found  a  point 
of  contact.  Lassalle  was  ambitious  on  a  large  scale,  and 
whether  the  German  Empire  should  close  with  the  house  of 
Hohenzollern  or  the  house  of  Lassalle,  that  was  perhaps  doubt- 
ful ;  but  his  sympathies  were  through  and  through  monarch- 
ical. .  .  .  Lassalle  was  an  energetic  and  exceedingly  clever 
man,  and  it  was  always  instructive  to  talk  with  him.  Our 
conversations  have  lasted  for  hours,  and  I  have  always  re- 
gretted their  close.  ...  It  would  have  given  me  great 
pleasure  to  have  a  similarly  gifted  man  for  a  neighbor  in  my 
country  home. 

With  grim  humor  Bismarck  hinted  at  Lassalle's  be- 
setting weakness,  his  colossal  vanity,  which  led  him  to 
believe  that  it  was  really  possible  for  a  social  revolution 
to  displace  the  ruling  house  of  Germany  and  place  him 


THE   FIRST   STAGE   OF  GERMAN  SOCIALISM         77 

on  the  throne.  And  yet,  with  characteristic  inconsist- 
ency, he  declared,  "I  have  been  a  repubhcan  from  child- 
hood." Many  believed  these  frequent  contradictions 
in  his  teachings  and  actions  to  have  a  deeper  cause  than 
intellectual  waywardness  —  that  they  were  indicative 
of  a  deep-seated  moral  insincerity.  In  any  event,  we 
need  not  fear  to  waste  our  time  in  studying  the  career 
of  one  who  made  so  profound  an  impression  upon  the 
most  remarkable  man  that  Germany  produced  in  the 
nineteenth  century. 

Lassalle  was  born  in  Breslau,  in  1825,  the  son  of  a 
wealthy  Jewish  merchant.  He  was  not  proud  of  his  ex- 
traction, but  with  his  cynical  wit  once  said,  "There  are 
two  classes  of  men  especially  that  I  cannot  tolerate,  lit- 
erary men  and  Jews  —  and  unfortunately  I  belong  to 
both."  The  father  wished  his  son  trained  to  succeed  him 
in  his  large  wholesale  business,  and  sent  the  lad  to  a  com- 
mercial school.  Young  Lassalle  showed  no  liking  or  apti- 
tude for  business,  but  a  great  fondness  for  study,  and  the 
father  at  length  abandoned  his  plan  and  Lassalle  was 
allowed  to  enter  the  University  of  Breslau,  whence  he 
afterwards  went  to  Berlin.  He  devoted  himself  especially 
to  philology  and  philosophy,  becoming  a  pronounced 
Hegelian.  His  career  as  a  student  is  conceded  to  have 
been  exceptionally  brilliant,  and  he  was  early  admitted 
to  the  friendship  and  esteem  of  the  most  celebrated  men 
of  letters  and  science.  Heine  ^  was  his  friend,  and  Wil- 
helm  von  Humboldt  called  him  Das  Wunderkind.  The 
boastful  words  that  he  once  wrote  were  in  great  meas- 

1  Heine  writes  to  Lassalle  in  1846 :  "I  have  found  in  no  one  so  much 
passion  and  clearness  of  intellect  united  in  action.  You  had  Kood  right 
to  be  audacious  —  we  others  only  usurp  this  divine  right,  this  heavenly 
privilege." 


78  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

ure  justified  :  "Ask  friends  and  foes  alike  about  me,  and 
if  they  are  men  who  have  themselves  learned  something, 
both  will  agree  unanimously  that  I  write  every  line  armed 
with  the  entire  culture  of  my  century." 

After  taking  his  doctorate,  Lassalle  began  with  the 
promise  of  remarkable  literary  and  professional  achieve- 
ment. His  first  book,  on  the  "Philosophy  of  Heraclitus 
the  Obscure,"  was  not  printed  until  1858,  but  before  pub- 
lication was  read  by  many  in  manuscript  and  received 
the  warmest  commendations.  A  second  work,  on  "The 
System  of  Acquired  Rights"  (1861),  was  pronounced  by 
Savigny,  the  great  jurist,  the  ablest  legal  book  that  had 
been  written  since  the  sixteenth  century. 

This  latter  book  was  the  product  of  the  first  episode 
that  interfered  with  Lassalle's  promising  development. 
The  Countess  von  Hatzfield  had  the  misfortune  to  be 
married  to  a  wealthy  and  brutal  German  nobleman, 
whose  conduct  at  length  forced  her  to  leave  him.  In 
1846  Lassalle  took  up  her  case,  studied  and  mastered  the 
German  law  for  the  purpose,  conducted  her  cause  through 
thirty-six  courts,  and,  after  a  contest  of  eight  years,  won 
a  complete  triumph.  At  the  beginning,  Lassalle  seems 
to  have  acted  in  the  spirit  of  a  knight-errant,  anxious  only 
to  redress  the  wrongs  of  a  much  injured  woman ;  but 
the  countess  was  beautiful  and  accomplished,  and  the 
tongue  of  scandal  did  not  fail  to  wag  freely  concerning 
this  intimacy.  Perhaps  towards  the  end  it  was  less  inno- 
'  cent  than  at  the  beginning,  but  there  was  an  uncalculating 
chivalry  in  the  course  of  Lassalle  that  moves  one's  ad- 
miration. 

Nor  was  this  Lassalle's  only  trouble  during  this  period. 
He  took  part,  as  many  German  students  did,  in  the  Revo- 


THE  FIRST  STAGE   OF   GERMAN  SOCIALISM         79 

lution  of  1848,  and  was  in  consequence  condemned  to 
six  months'  imprisonment.  After  1859  he  was  enabled, 
by  the  intercession  of  Humboldt,  to  reside  in  Berlin,  where 
he  produced  his  "System  of  Acquired  Rights."  This 
learned  work  was  an  appHcation  of  the  historical  method 
to  legal  ideas  and  institutions ;  and  it  may  perhaps  be 
regarded  as  the  first  step  in  that  intellectual  development 
which  led  Lassalle  into  Socialism,  since  the  net  result  of 
his  studies  was  the  discrediting  of  the  chief  existing  social 
institutions. 

The  year  1862  marks  the  beginning  of  the  two  most 
remarkable  careers  in  the  history  of  modern  Germany. 
In  that  year  Bismarck  became  chief  minister  of  Prussia, 
and  entered  on  that  line  of  policy  which  issued  in  the 
re-formation  of  the  German  Empire;  and  in  the  same 
year  Lassalle  began  his  leadership  of  the  German  pro- 
letariat and  the  organization  of  the  Social  Democracy. 
The  future  may  yet  reverse  the  estimate  now  entertained 
of  these  two  men,  and  the  significance  of  their  lives  and 
achievements,  and  put  Lassalle  on  the  pedestal  that 
Bismarck  has  now  occupied  for  a  generation. 

There  had  never  ceased  to  be  social  discontent  in  Ger- 
many ;  as  the  peasantry  developed  into  the  proletariat, 
this  discontent  did  not  lessen  ;  but  the  people  had  become 
hopeless.  Reformations  and  revolutions  had  passed 
over  Germany  times  without  number,  and  still  the  lot 
of  the  poor  seemed  little  improved,  if  any  —  at  any  rate, 
the  progress  in  their  comfort  and  uplift  had  no  just  pro- 
portion to  the  general  progress  of  Germany  in  wealth  and 
intelligence.  It  was  Lassalle's  work  to  arouse  these  slug- 
gish masses,  to  put  new  hope  into  their  hearts,  and  to 
organize  them  for  action.     He  did  not  begin  with  a 


8o  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

deeply  reasoned  philosophy  of  social  life,  or  with  any 
thorough  knowledge  of  economic  conditions  and  economic 
laws,  still  less  with  a  well-considered  practical  programme. 
He  began  with  a  heart  much  moved  by  the  sufferings  of 
the  poor,  with  a  conviction  that  these  were  in  large  part 
unnecessary  and  remediable;  and  gradually,  observing 
men  and  studying  books  as  he  went  on,  he  worked  out 
his  ideas  in  a  series  of  speeches  and  pamphlets,  arriving 
at  the  last  at  a  tolerably  consistent  philosophy  and  a 
thoroughly  practical  political  programme. 

A  lecture  that  he  delivered  in  1862  on  "The  Working- 
man's  Programme"  was  epoch-making  —  lucid  in  style, 
scientific  in  treatment.  He  declared  that  men  were  en- 
tering on  a  new  era  of  history,  of  which  the  working- 
classes  will  be  the  makers  and  representatives.  He 
showed  most  strikingly  the  injustice  and  selfishness  of 
present  social  institutions.  The  workers  had  no  right  to 
be  contented  with  their  lot ;  their  too  easy  acquiescence 
was  their  ruin.  The  daring  orator  was  prosecuted  for 
this  offence,  but  was  fortunate  enough  to  get  off  with 
a  light  fine.  He  was  not  lacking  in  audacity  when  he 
appeared  in  his  own  behalf  before  his  judges.  "You  do 
not  beheve  in  revolution,"  he  said,  "but  my  studies  have 
taught  me  to  believe  in  revolution.  It  will  either  come 
in  complete  legality  and  with  all  the  blessings  of  peace  — 
if  people  are  only  wise  enough  to  resolve  that  it  shall  be 
introduced  in  time  and  from  above  —  or  it  will  one  day 
break  in  amid  the  convulsions  of  violence,  with  wild, 
flowing  hair,  and  iron  sandals  upon  its  feet.  In  one  way 
or  the  other  it  will  come,  and  when,  shutting  myself  from 
the  noise  of  the  day,  I  lose  myself  in  history  —  then  I 
hear  its  tread." 


THE   FIRST  STAGE   OF   GERMAN  SOCIALISM         8 1 

In  the  following  year,  in  "An  Open  Letter,"  Lassalle 
outlined  a  political  and  social-economic  programme  that 
was  clear  and  practical.  He  advocated  a  separate  politi- 
cal party  of  workingmen  to  secure  State  cooperative 
production  as  the  only  hope  of  betterment.  The  govern- 
ment should  be  asked,  as  a  first  measure,  to  pledge  its 
credit  to  the  working-classes  to  the  amount  of  100,000,000 
thalers,  to  establish  cooperative  associations  for  produc- 
tion. To  this  extent  Lassalle  was  a  follower  of  Louis 
Blanc,  as  to  practical  methods.  Nobody  is  entitled  to 
say  that  the  method  would  not  succeed,  until  it  has  been 
fairly  tried  and  its  futility  demonstrated.  On  the 
other  hand,  nobody  is  entitled  to  assert  that  the  plan 
would  succeed,  because  that  is  just  what  nobody  knows. 
It  is  certainly  worth  trying,  on  a  sufficiently  extended 
scale  to  insure  a  fair  experiment ;  and  Germany,  with 
her  system  of  strongly  centralized  government,  offers 
a  peculiarly  inviting  field  for  the  trial.  Its  failure  would 
go  far  to  prove  Socialism  to  be  economically  impos- 
sible ;  its  success  would  remove  many  of  the  most  serious 
objections  hitherto  urged  against  Socialism.  Is  it 
because  governments  are  afraid  that  the  experiment 
might  succeed  that  none  of  them  have  had  the  courage 
to  try? 

The  idea  of  organizing  the  German  workmen,  and  even 
of  forming  them  into  a  separate  political  party,  was  by 
no  means  original  with  Lassalle.  Others  had  preceded 
him  in  this  line,  and  with  several  leaders  who  had  the 
advantage  of  priority  and  a  recognized  position  he  and 
his  projects  came  into  violent  collision.  The  result  was 
for  some  time  in  doubt,  and  the  linal  battle  was  fought 
at    Frankfort-on-Main,    May    17,    1863.     Lassalle    ad- 


82  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

dressed  the  thirteen  hundred  delegates  present  with  great 
confidence  and  vehemence  :  — 

If  you  vote  against  me,  if  the  great  majority  of  the  work- 
ing-class vote  against  me,  then  I  shall  say  to  Herr  Schulze 
[his  chief  opponent] :  "  You  are  right  —  these  people  are  not 
yet  educated  enough  to  be  helped."  If  I  thought  only  of  my- 
self and  my  natural  egoism,  I  should  be  compelled  to  desire 
ardently  that  you  would  decide  against  me ;  for  if  you,  and 
not  only  you,  but  the  great  majority  of  the  working-class  were 
to  do  that,  I  should  —  justified  in  the  eyes  of  science  and  cer- 
tain of  being  justified  by  history  —  withdraw  quietly  to  sci- 
ence ;  I  should,  vnth.  a  sad  smile  at  your  unreadiness,  stretch 
myself  out  perhaps  in  the  Gulf  of  Naples,  and  let  the  soft 
breezes  of  the  South  blow  over  me ;  I  should  spare  myself  a 
Hfe  full  of  torment,  vexation  and  worry.  Thus  your  de- 
cision would  be  exceedingly  easy  to  bear.  But  you  would  lose 
one  of  the  best  friends  of  your  class,  and  you  would  not  only 
lose  me,  but  perhaps  for  decades  every  one  wishful  to  help  you 
would  be  frightened.  He  would  say  to  himself,  "  This  class 
is  not  ready ;  let  me  be  warned  by  the  example  of  Lassalle." 
Therefore  I  tell  you,  by  all  the  love  for  the  cause  of  the  work- 
ing-class which  I  bear  in  me,  my  whole  soul  hangs  on  your 
decision. 

Won  by  this  persuasive  version  of  "Codlin's  your 
friend,  not  Short,"  the  delegates  voted  almost  unani- 
mously in  Lassalle's  favor,  and  on  May  23  following  the 
''Universal  German  Working-men's  Union  Association" 
was  formed,  avowing  as  its  fundamental  principle,  "the 
conviction  that  the  adequate  representation  of  the  social 
interests  of  the  German  working-classes  and  the  real  re- 
moval of  class  antagonism  in  society  can  be  secured  only 
by  universal,  equal,  and  direct  suffrage"  ;  and  as  its  pur- 
pose "the  acquisition  of  such  suffrage  by  peaceable  and 


THE   FIRST   STAGE  OF   GERMAN  SOCIALISIM         83 

legal  means,  and  particularly  by  gaining  over  public 
opinion." 

Universal  suffrage  was  won  in  Germany  in  1867/  three 
years  after  Lassalle's  death,  but  though  the  gaining  of 
the  ballot  has  doubtless  promoted  the  recent  growth  of 
Social  Democracy,  the  first  streaks  of  the  millennial  dawn 
are  not  yet  visible  on  the  horizon,  even  to  the  most  hope- 
ful eyes.  The  agitation  thus  begun  went  on  with  vary- 
ing success,  but  the  leader  became  despondent  towards 
the  last  over  the  slow  rate  of  progress.  There  seemed 
indeed  some  prospect  that  the  movement  might  collapse, 
when  J.assalle  became  involved  in  an  unfortunate  love 
affair,  which  led  to  a  duel  in  which  he  was  mortally 
wounded,  and  expired  August  31,  1864.  ''I  shall  not 
live  to  be  forty  years  old,"  he  had  prophesied.  Even  if 
the  bullet  of  his  adversary  had  not  slain  him,  disease 
would  have  claimed  him  in  a  few  months  more.  His 
death  caused  consternation  and  even  a  temporary  paraly- 
sis in  the  party  he  had  formed,  but  after  a  time  it  rallied 
and  pursued  its  course. 

n 

Before  following  its  later  history,  let  us  pause  to  con- 
sider more  carefully  the  contribution  that  Lassalle  made 
to  the  movement.  That  contribution  was  so  overrated 
at  the  time  that  there  has  since  been  some  danger  of  under- 
rating it.  Lassalle  was  unquestionably  a  man  of  rare 
abilities  and  force.     He  had  tremendous  energy,  uncom- 

'  This  is  true  only  as  to  elections  for  the  Reischstag,  for  which  all  males 
of  twenty-five  years  and  over  may  vote.  Equal  suffrage,  that  is,  suffrage 
for  women,  has  not  been  granted  even  in  imjjerial  affairs.  In  the  various 
States  of  the  German  Empire,  sufifragc  is  limited,  even  for  males. 


84  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

mon  versatility,  considerable  magnetism,  and  unbounded 
ambition.  He  lacked  sobermindedness,  unselfishness, 
sincerity,  and  was  also  greatly  deficient  in  self-control 
and  common  sense.  He  was  histrionic,  vain,  egotistic, 
visionary.  Worst  of  all,  his  heart  was  not  really  in  the 
cause  that  he  had  espoused ;  his  intellect  alone  was  in- 
terested in  the  cause  of  the  working-classes,  and  in  leader- 
ship of  them  he  saw  the  best  opportunity  then  open  to 
him.  of  distinction  —  yet  at  heart  he  was  an  aristocrat, 
without  the  excuse  of  being  an  aristocrat  by  birth.  Not- 
withstanding this  queer  mixture  of  qualities  and  motives, 
perhaps  in  part  by  reason  of  such  mixture,  he  accom- 
plished great  things,  and  might  have  done  still  greater 
had  his  heart  gone  with  his  head,  had  he  joined  more 
seriousness  and  sincerity  to  his  brilliant  mind  and  rest- 
less energy.  Something  of  Bismarck's  practical  sense  and 
steadiness  of  purpose  would  have  made  him  the  great 
man  that  he  lacked  little  of  becoming. 

Lassalle's  writings  were  mainly  polemic,  and  so  far 
ephemeral.  He  never  had  the  time  and  patience  to 
work  out  a  full  socialistic  scheme,  and  perhaps  it  is  quite 
as  well  so,  for  the  defect  of  Socialism  has  always  been  too 
much  "system."  —  an  excess  of  philosophic  abstraction, 
and  too  little  contact  with  fact.  Socialism  must  strive 
more  for  reality  and  less  for  theory,  if  it  is  ever  to  get 
anywhere.  Briefly,  as  we  gather  them  from  his  pamphlets 
and  speeches,  his  most  important  ideas  were  these:  — 

The  direct  ownership  of  man  (slavery,  serfdom)  has 
ceased,  but  there  remains  in  society  indirect  ownership, 
in  that  some  men  have  through  their  possession  of  capital 
or  accumulated  property  the  power  of  exploiting  others. 
The  present  social  system  raises  this  ethical  question : 


THE   FIRST  STAGE   OF   GERMAN  S0CIALIS:M         85 

Has  the  employer,  as  such,  the  moral  right  to  appropriate 
the  result  of  other  men's  labors  ?  If  he  has  not,  as  Las- 
salle  maintained,  then  the  present  social  system  is  funda- 
mentally bad  and  demands  a  fundamental  alteration. 
The  Revolution  overthrew  feudalism,  in  the  name  of 
humanity  and  freedom,  but  only  established  on  its  ruins 
Capitalism,  a  new  species  of  despotism.  A  new  Revolu- 
tion is  demanded  to  complete  the  emancipation  of  the 
laborer.  The  proletariat  is  still  a  subject  class,  and  has 
benefited  little  or  nothing  by  the  Revolution.  Wealth, 
not  noble  birth,  is  now  the  basis  of  right  and  privilege. 

Thii  is  because  the  laborer  is  held  down  by  ''the  iron 
law  of  wages."  As  this  "law "  is  Lassalle's  principal  con- 
tribution to  the  philosophy  of  Sociahsm,  it  deserves  care- 
ful examination.  When  closely  scrutinized  it  appears  to 
be  little  else  than  a  development  or  more  extensive  ap- 
plication of  a  principle  first  stated  by  the  English  econ- 
omist Ricardo  :  "The  natural  price  of  labor,  therefore, 
depends  on  the  price  of  food,  necessaries,  and  conveniences 
required  for  the  support  of  the  laborer  and  his  family. 
With  a  rise  in  the  price  of  food  and  necessaries,  the  nat- 
ural price  of  labor  will  rise ;  with  the  fall  in  their  price, 
the  natural  price  of  labor  will  fall."  ^ 

The  proton  pscudos,  the  radical  fallacy,  in  Lassalle's 
doctrine  is  this  notion  that  there  is  a  "natural"  or 
"intrinsic"  value  or  price  of  anything  in  the  world. 
"Value"  and  "price"  are  not  absolute  but  relative  things, 
and  are  in  a  constant  state  of  flux.  Ricardo  has  merely 
said  in  a  pretentious  way,  what  if  put  simply  would  not 
be  a  profound  economic  truth,  but  a  bald  truism:  the 
laborer  must  live,  and  he  cannot  live  long  unless  he  is  paid 

'  "  Principles  of  Political  Economy  and  Taxation,"  Chap.  V,  §  35. 


86  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

a  wage  that  will  keep  himself  and  family  in  the  neces- 
saries of  hfe.  But  this  does  not  fix  a  "natural"  price  of 
labor;  it  merely  fixes  a  hmit  below  which  the  price  of 
labor  cannot  fall  without  extinguishment  of  the  laborer. 
The  principle  has  no  other  application  than  this.  Labor- 
power  is  a  commodity,  and  its  price  at  any  moment  is 
fixed  by  the  relation  of  supply  and  demand.  Wages 
depend  on  how  many  men  are  competing  for  the  same 
job,  and  what  is  the  lowest  price  any  of  them  is  willing 
to  take,  and  there  is  no  other  law  of  wages  than  just  this. 
If  the  men  considerably  outnumber  the  jobs,  their  com- 
petition forces  wages  down ;  if  the  jobs  outnumber  the 
men,  wages  rise.  Of  course,  wages  cannot  fall  —  save 
in  limited  cases  and  for  a  limited  time  —  below  an  amount 
that  will  keep  the  laborer  and  his  family,  not  merely 
alive,  but  in  a  state  of  industrial  efficiency.  So  much 
both  experience  and  logic  approve  about  a  law  of  wages. 
Without  detecting  its  hidden  fallacy,  Lassalle  adopted 
Ricardo's  principle  as  his  own,  and  applied  it  with  vigor 
to  the  condition  of  the  German  laboring  classes.  The 
average  wage,  he  said,  is  found  to  be  the  amount  neces- 
sary to  secure  the  laborer's  subsistence  and  the  propaga- 
tion of  his  class.  Wages  cannot  go  much  above  or  much 
below  this  amount.  Supply  and  demand  limit  their 
rise;  life  and  death  limit  their  fall.  Thus  there  is  an 
automatic  regulation  of  wages,  and  the  efforts  of  the 
laboring  class  to  better  their  condition  by  uniting  to 
obtain  higher  wages  and  shorter  hours  are  foredoomed 
to  failure  —  they  are  fighting  against  a  law  as  certain 
and  as  pitiless  as  gravitation.  An  increasing  production 
of  wealth  brings  no  benefit  to  the  workingman,  except 
as  the  general  standard  of  living  slowly  rises  and  so  neces- 
sitates an  equally  gradual  increase  of  wages. 


THE   FIRST  STAGE  OF   GERMAN  SOCIALISM         87 

This  asserted  "law"  is  open  to  many  objections,  any 
one  of  which  is  fatal  to  its  validity.  In  the  first  place, 
granting  its  truth,  it  might  still  be  objected  that  this  is 
a  historical  law,  a  generalized  experience  of  what  has 
hitherto  been,  not  a  principle  founded  in  the  nature  of 
social  facts.  If  valid  at  all,  it  is  valid  only  as  to  past  con- 
ditions, without  being  necessarily  applicable  to  the  future. 
Education  and  organization  among  working-men  are 
limiting,  and  will  still  more  limit,  the  power  of  Capital- 
ism, and  are  capable  of  effecting  considerable  modifica- 
tions of  the  interaction  of  supply  and  demand. 

In  the  second  place,  the  "law"  is  not  even  valid  as  a 
historical  generalization.  The  lot  of  the  working-man 
has  very  greatly  improved  since  the  Revolution,  to  go 
no  farther  back.  The  average  wage-earner  to-day  has 
in  his  house  comforts  and  luxuries  that  princes  and  nobles 
did  not  enjoy  a  century  ago.  The  trouble  with  the  wage- 
earner,  as  with  nearly  all  other  persons  in  modern  society, 
is  that  his  scale  of  wants  has  increased  much  faster  than 
his  possessions.  This  is  not  to  his  discredit,  but  quite 
the  reverse.  If  men  did  not  desire  more  than  they  pos- 
sess, one  of  the  strongest  motives  to  exertion  and  hence 
to  human  progress  would  be  lacking.  The  negro  in 
Central  Africa,  where  the  banana  grows  wild,  and  the 
woods  are  full  of  game,  and  clothing  and  shelter  are  super- 
fluous luxuries,  has  no  motive  for  exertion ;  and  ac- 
cordingly civilization  has  made  no  progress  there  in  four 
thousand  years.  Lassalle  once  put  this,  as  he  put  most 
things,  in  a  very  effective  fashion  :  — 

You  German  working-men  are  curious  people.  French 
and  English  working-men  have  to  be  shown  how  their  miser- 
able condition  may  be  improved;    but  you  have  first  to  be 


88  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

shown  that  you  are  in  a  miserable  condition.  So  long  as  you 
have  a  piece  of  bad  sausage  and  a  glass  of  beer,  you  do  not 
observe  that  you  want  anything.  That  is  a  result  of  your 
accursed  absence  of  needs.  What,  you  will  say,  is  this,  then, 
not  a  virtue  ?  Yes,  in  the  eyes  of  the  Christian  preacher  of 
morality,  it  is  certainly  a  virtue.  Absence  of  needs  is  the 
virtue  of  the  Indian  pillar-saint  and  of  the  Christian  monk, 
but  in  the  eyes  of  the  student  of  history  and  the  political 
economist,  it  is  not.  Ask  all  political  economists  what  is  the 
greatest  misfortune  for  a  nation?  The  absence  of  wants. 
For  these  are  the  spurs  of  its  development  and  of  ci\dlization. 
The  Neapolitan  lazzaroni  are  so  far  behind  in  civilization, 
because  they  stretch  themselves  out  contentedly  and  warm 
themselves  in  the  sun  when  they  have  secured  a  handful  of 
maccaroni.  Why  is  the  Russian  Cossack  so  backward  in 
civilization?  Because  he  eats  tallow  candles  and  is  happy 
when  he  can  fuddle  himself  on  bad  liquor.  To  have  as  many 
needs  as  possible,  but  to  satisfy  them  in  a  respectable  way, 
that  is  the  virtue  of  the  present,  of  the  economic  age  !  And 
so  long  as  you  do  not  understand  that  truth,  I  shall  preach 
in  vain. 

But  this  gap  between  desire  and  possession,  while  it 
is  a  sharp  spur  to  exertion,  breeds  much  discontent  and 
social  turmoil. 

Third,  the  "law,"  so  far  as  it  is  a  law,  is  far  from  being 
"iron,"  but,  on  the  contrary,  should  be  called  the  caout- 
chouc law.  Nothing  can  well  be  more  elastic  than  what 
we  are  pleased  to  call  the  "necessaries"  of  life.  It  is 
commonplace,  but  true,  that  the  luxuries  of  one  genera- 
tion become  the  necessaries  of  the  next.  Bath-rooms, 
hot  and  cold  water  on  every  floor,  hot-air  furnaces  or 
steam-heating  apparatus,  gas,  electric  lights,  electric 
bells,  telephones,  —  some  of  these  luxuries^  most  of  them 


THE  FIRST  STAGE   OF   GERMAN   SOCIALISM         89 

in  fact,  are  demanded  now  in  cottages  or  flats  for  work- 
ing-men in  all  our  cities;  they  are  now  "necessaries," 
and  yet  fifty  years  ago  only  the  very  rich  could  have  any 
of  them,  and  the  richest  could  not  have  some,  for  they 
were  then  unknown.  There  is  equal  elasticity  in  the 
opposite  direction :  an  Italian  or  Hungarian  immigrant 
can  and  does  live  on  what  a  native  American  would 
scorn  as  fit  only  for  his  pigs,  while  a  Chinaman  can  and 
does  thrive  on  a  wage  that  even  the  Italian  or  Hunga- 
rian would  think  was  equivalent  to  starvation.  Just 
what  sum  is  necessary  to  enable  the  working-man  to  live 
and  bring  up  children  to  a  laboring  age?  It  has  never 
yet  been  determined,  and  until  it  has  been  determined, 
it  is  ridiculous  to  speak  of  the  "iron"  law  of  wages. 

None  of  these  objections  were  perceived  by  Lassalle, 
and  he  rung  the  changes  on  his  "iron  law"  with  great 
effectiveness,  in  numerous  speeches  and  pamphlets.  He 
had  the  art  of  so  putting  things  as  to  impress  the  imagina- 
tion, and  rouse  the  latent  sense  of  wrong  in  the  hearts 
of  German  laborers.  He  could  translate  abstract  ideas 
into  concrete  fact  in  most  effective  fashion,  and  that  his 
translation  was  not  always  accurate  by  no  means  lessened 
its  effectiveness.     In  a  speech  at  Frankfort  he  said  :  — 

What  is  the  consequence  of  that  law,  which,  as  I  have 
proved  to  you,  is  accepted  by  all  political  economists  ?  What 
is  the  consequence  of  the  same  ?  I  ask.  You  believe,  perhaps, 
laborers  and  fellow-citizens,  that  you  are  human  beings  —  that 
you  are  men.  Speaking  from  the  standpoint  of  political 
economy,  you  make  a  terrible  mistake.  Speaking  from  the 
standpoint  of  political  economy,  you  are  nothing  but  a  com- 
modity, a  high  price  for  which  increases  your  numbers,  just 
the  same  as  a  high  price  for  stockings  increases  the  number 


90  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

of  stockings,  if  there  are  not  enough  of  them ;  and  you  are 
swept  away,  your  number  is  diminished  by  smaller  wages  — 
by  what  Malthus  calls  the  preventive  and  positive  checks  to 
population ;  your  number  is  diminished,  just  as  if  you  were 
vermin  against  which  society  wages  war. 

He  went  on  to  show  that  the  average  of  life  among  the 
laboring  classes  is  much  less  than  the  average  life  of  the 
rich,  because  the  latter  are  better  housed,  clothed,  and 
fed.  The  working-man  is  unable  to  buy  sufficient  food, 
nourishing  food,  for  himself  and  family,  and  this  means 
starvation. 

There  are,  gentlemen,  two  ways  of  dying  of  starvation. 
It  indeed  happens  seldom  that  a  man  falls  down  dead  in  a 
moment  from  hunger;  but  when  a  man  is  subjected  to  a 
greater  expenditure  of  power  than  he  is  able  to  replace,  on 
account  of  poor  food  or  a  miserable  mode  of  life  —  when  he 
gives  out  more  physical  energy  than  he  takes  in  —  then,  I  say, 
he  dies  of  slow  starvation. 

It  was  no  wonder  that  oratory  like  this  produced  a 
great  effect  among  the  German  working-men,  and  that 
the  new  organization  was  much  feared  by  the  govern- 
ment. Nevertheless,  the  agitation  was  comparatively 
a  failure;  but  few  of  the  class  to  be  benefited  actually 
became  members  of  the  Association ;  and  Lassalle,  cha- 
grined and  despairing,  is  thought  to  have  welcomed 
death  as  an  alternative  preferable  to  the  open  acknowl- 
edgment of  failure.  His  practical  programme  was  es- 
sentially that  of  Louis  Blanc,  to  abolish  the  distinction 
between  capitalist  and  laborer  by  making  all  men  both 
laborers  and  capitalists.  Productive  association  with 
State  capital  was  the  magic  wand  by  which  he  proposed 


THE  FIRST  STAGE  OF  GERMAN  SOCIALISM        91 

to  effect  this  transformation.  He  advocated  this  idea 
with  all  the  powers  of  persuasive  oratory.  He  scouted 
the  theory  of  the  State  that  would  limit  its  function  to 
protection  of  life  and  property,  —  this  he  called  the 
"night-watchman"  theory.  He  held,  on  the  contrary, 
that  the  State  is  an  "institution  in  which  the  whole  vir- 
tue of  humanity  should  be  realized."  The  end  of  the 
State  is  the  education  and  development  of  the  race, 
enabling  each  man  to  reach  a  height  of  culture,  power,  and 
freedom  which  would  be  unattainable  through  individual 
struggle.  This  is,  at  all  events,  a  nobler  conception  than 
the  Manchester  theory  of  the  State,  with  its  doctrine  of 
laissez  faire,  which  is  polite  French  for  the  ruder  "devil 
take  the  hindmost"  of  the  vernacular  —  though  both 
mean  the  same  thing,  since  both  imply  a  brutal,  cut- 
throat competition  and  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  i.e. 
the  strongest. 

Even  had  he  been  able  to  persuade  the  government  to 
make  trial  of  his  scheme, — and  he  seems  to  have  labored 
earnestly  to  persuade  Bismarck  to  commit  Prussia  to 
an  experiment, — it  would  not  have  proved  a  solution 
of  the  social  problem ;  it  could  have  been  nothing  better 
than  a  soothing  plaster  on  the  great  running  sore  of 
society.  A  real  solution  could  be  hoped  for,  if  at  all, 
only  in  a  universal  collectivism,  not  a  few  sporadic 
experiments  at  cooperative  production.  Lassalle  accom- 
plished nothing  but  the  better  organization  of  German 
working-men  and  the  making  of  a  political  issue  out 
of  the  abstract  question  of  Socialism.  But  that  was 
an  accomplishment  which  has  seemed  of  greater  signifi- 
cance with  every  decade  that  has  elapsed  since  his 
death. 


92  SOCIALISM  AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 


III 


For  some  years  Lassalle's  organization  maintained  a 
precarious  existence,  and  then  was  absorbed  by  the  Social 
Democratic  Working-men's  Party,  formed  in  1869  at 
Eisenach.  The  leading  spirits  in  this  party  were  Wil- 
helm  Liebknecht  and  Ferdinand  August  Bebel. 

Liebknecht  was  born  in  1826,  and  descended  from  a 
family  that  for  several  generations  had  been  in  the  civil 
service.  He  early  decided  that  such  a  career  was  un- 
worthy of  a  freeman  and  was  therefore  not  for  him.  After 
graduation  from  the  gymnasium  he  studied  at  the  univer- 
sities of  Giessen,  Marburg,  and  Berlin.  A  rebel  against 
social  institutions  by  nature,  he  made  himself  even  less 
reconcilable  with  existing  things  by  refusing  all  Brod- 
studien,  and  studying  only  what  pleased  his  whimsical 
tastes.  He  took  part  in  the  Revolution  of  1848,  and  in 
consequence  spent  thirteen  years  in  exile,  first  in  Switzer- 
land, and  later  in  London.  Permitted  to  return  by  a 
general  amnesty  on  the  accession  of  Wilham  IV  as  king 
of  Prussia,  he  threw  himself  into  the  cause  of  the  Social 
Democracy. 

Personally  upright  and  honorable  in  his  relations  with 
individuals,  as  a  leader  of  his  party  Liebknecht  was 
utterly  without  moral  scruple.  During  his  later  years  he 
served  in  the  Reischstag,  but  more  effectively  as  editor 
of  the  sociaHst  newspaper,  Vorwdrts.  He  also  contributed 
several  books  of  value  to  the  literature  of  the  movement, 
and  continued  in  active  service  until  his  death  in  1890. 
He  had  none  of  the  personal  charm  of  Lassalle,  and  there 
was  an  element  of  malevolence  and  savage  temper  in  his 
writings  that  limited  their  effectiveness  for  making  con- 


THE   FIRST   STAGE   OF   GERMAN  SOCIALISM 


93 


verts  to  Socialism,  though  they  did  much  to  embitter 
class  feeling  in  Germany,  and  to  widen  the  chasm  be- 
tween the  working-classes  and  those  who  still  possessed 
the  greater  share  of  wealth  and  political  power. 

Herr  Bebel,  born  at  Cologne,  in  1840,  was  a  man  of 
altogether  different  t3'pe,  the  first  of  the  leaders  of  the 
German  working-men  to  come  from  their  own  ranks. 
He  set  up  as  a  master-turner  in  Leipzig,  in  1864,  and  grad- 
ually built  up  a  large  and  successful  business,  in  which 
several  hundred  men  are  employed.  Here  was  a  socialist, 
protesting  against  the  exploitation  of  the  laboring  man, 
himself  become  an  exploiter  !  His  enemies  and  political 
opponents  have  not  been  slow  to  seize  upon  this  incon- 
sistency and  make  the  most  of  it.  The  inconsistency  is 
more  apparent  than  real,  however.  All  intelligent  so- 
cialists now  admit  that  the  individual  is  powerless  to 
alter  the  system  in  which  we  all  find  ourselves,  neither 
responsible  for  the  existing  order  nor  able  separately  to 
do  anything  effectual  to  modify  it.  All  that  any  one  of 
us  can  do  is,  strive  to  rouse  the  people  to  make  a  united 
effort  for  the  betterment  of  society;  and  in  the  mean- 
time one  must  live  his  own  life  as  he  best  can  under  exist- 
ing conditions,  doing  as  little  harm  and  as  much  good  as 
he  may  to  his  fellows. 

In  1872  Bebel  was  found  guilty  of  the  double  charges 
of  treason  and  Use  majeste,  and  imprisoned  for  two  years 
and  nine  months  —  too  brief  a  time  for  one  really  guilty 
of  treason,  and  too  long  for  the  mere  offence  of  political 
agitation,  which  was  his  real  crime.  This  persecution 
made  him  a  martyr  in  the  eyes  of  German  working-men, 
and  he  has  been  their  political  idol  ever  since.  He  has 
held   a   seat   continuously   in    the   Reichstag,   and   has 


94  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

developed  considerable  power  as  an  orator,  while  by  a 
certain  rugged  sincerity  he  has  gradually  gained  the 
confidence  of  all  classes,  and  is  given  a  respectful  hearing 
whenever  he  speaks,  such  as  is  commanded  by  hardly 
any  other  member,  even  government  officials.  He  has 
developed  equal  effectiveness  as  a  writer,  and  several 
books  attest  his  industry,  as  well  as  set  forth  his  idea  of 
socialistic  doctrine  and  policy. 

Some  of  Bebel's  views  are  worth  noting  here,  because 
they  differ  from  those  of  many  other  socialists.  In  de- 
fining the  objects  of  Social  Democracy  he  says  :  "We  aim 
in  the  domain  of  politics  at  Republicanism ;  in  the  do- 
main of  economics  at  Socialism;  and  in  the  domain  of 
what  is  to-day  called  religion,  at  Atheism."  ^  In  this  he 
is  practically  at  one  with  the  greatest  of  modern  socialists, 
Karl  Marx,  but  there  is  a  decided  difference  between 
them  in  temper.  Marx  was  tolerant  of  the  beliefs  of 
others ;  Bebel  is  intolerant.  Marx  for  himself  rejected 
Christianity ;  Bebel  is  bitterly  hostile  to  it.  Of  course, 
this  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  leader  has  had  a  marked 
effect  on  German  socialists,  and  as  a  class  they  are  more 
openly  antichristian  than  the  socialists  of  any  other  coun- 
try. There  can  be  Httle  doubt  that,  could  Bebel  and  his 
like  have  their  will.  Social  Democracy  in  the  hour  of  its 
triumph  would  prohibit  the  profession  of  any  form  of  reli- 
gion. This  denial  of  religious  liberty  is  in  glaring  oppo- 
sition to  what  is  always  declared  to  be  the  fundamental 
principle  of  Socialism :  to  gain  for  every  man  the  largest 
possible  liberty,  a  much  larger  liberty  than  any  man  now 
enjoys.  Bebel  has  also  proclaimed  an  equally  thorough 
hostility  to  marriage  as  a  legalized  institution :  — 

1  Speech  in  the  Reichstag,  March  31,  1881. 


THE  FIRST  STAGE  OF  GERMAN  SOCIALISM         95 

The  bourgeois  marriage  is  a  consequence  of  bourgeois  prop- 
erty. Marriage,  standing  as  it  does  in  the  most  intimate 
connection  to  property  and  the  right  of  inheritance,  demands 
"legitimate"  children  as  heirs.  It  is  entered  into  for  the 
purpose  of  obtaining  them,  and  the  pressure  exercised  by 
society  has  enabled  the  ruling  classes  to  enforce  it  in  the 
case  of  those  who  have  nothing  to  bequeath.  But  as  in 
the  new  community  there  will  be  nothing  to  bequeath 
.  .  .  compulsory  marriage  becomes  unnecessary  from  this 
standpoint  as  well  as  from  all  others. 

]\larriage,  as  at  present  understood,  is  an  arrangement 
most  closely  associated  ^\'ith  the  existing  social  status,  and 
stands  or  falls  \nth  it.^ 

Bebel  has  committed  the  common  error  of  generalizing 
too  freely  from  the  social  conditions  with  which  he  hap- 
pens to  have  most  personal  experience.  Even  so,  his 
theory  is  derived  from  the  sentiments  of  royal  and  noble 
families,  rather  than  from  the  bourgeoisie.  With  those 
who  have  titles  and  great  estates  to  transmit,  the  birth  of 
a  legal  heir  is  possibly  the  chief  end  in  marriage  - —  if 
personal  happiness  in  the  marriage  relation  is  also  ob- 
tained, so  much  the  better ;  if  not,  it  is  commonly  sought 
outside  the  bond  of  matrimony.  But  among  the  bour- 
geoisie in  the  larger  number  of  cases,  personal  gratifica- 
tion in  some  form  is  the  end  sought ;  marriages  not  con- 
tracted on  account  of  love  have  as  their  chief  motive 
financial  or  social  gain.  Not  the  interests  of  property, 
therefore,  but  personal  happiness,  is  the  social  founda- 
tion of  marriage.  But  in  the  order  contemplated  by 
Socialism,  business  gain  will  be  eliminated  as  a  motive, 
as  will  many  of  the  present  social  motives,  and  personal 

'  "Woman,  her  Past,  Present,  and  Future,"  pp.  231,  232. 


96  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

happiness  will  tend  to  become  the  sole  motive  of  mar- 
riage. Then,  as  now,  the  birth  of  children  will  be  re- 
garded as  the  normal  result,  rather  than  the  chief  end,  of 
marriage. 

The  opinions  of  Bebel  regarding  marriage  are  not  pe- 
culiar to  him,  but  it  is  equally  the  fact  that  many  social- 
ists do  not  share  them.  Opposition  to  marriage  in  Euro- 
pean^ countries  is  in  large  part  the  outgrowth  of  social 
conditions  that  are  general  there.  Marriages  are  usually 
arranged  by  parents  for  their  children,  on  a  cold-blooded 
business  basis.  If  mutual  affection  follows  unions  thus 
made,  well  and  good;  in  many  cases  mutual  affection 
does  result ;  but  if  not,  breach  of  the  seventh  command- 
ment is  regarded  as  venial,  provided  it  does  not  become 
publicly  known.  We  can  understand  and  even  sym- 
pathize with  the  growth  of  a  sentiment  against  marriages 
of  that  sort,  and  the  resulting  social  ethics ;  but  we  can 
also  see  little  likelihood  of  such  a  sentiment  becoming 
strong  among  the  socialists  of  America,  where  very  few 
marriages  are  contracted  for  any  other  reason  than  mu- 
tual affection  —  or  what  the  parties  mistake  for  mutual 
affection  when  they  pronounce  their  marriage  vows. 

rv 

For  several  years  the  German  States  looked  with  much 
indifference  on  the  growth  of  the  Social  Democracy, 
seeing  in  it  no  serious  menace  either  to  government  or 
society.  But  after  the  estabhshment  of  the  new  German 
Empire,  in  1870,  the  socialists  increased  rapidly,  until  in 
1877  they  polled  nearly  a  half  million  votes  and  elected 
twelve  representatives  in  the  Reichstag.  This  aroused 
the  apprehensions  of  Bismarck  and  the  Emperor,  and 


THE   FIRST  STAGE   OF   GERMAN   SOCIALISM         97 

already  there  had  been  serious  consideration  of  a  policy 
of  legal  repression,  when  two  attempts  on  the  Emperor's 
life  in  1878  brought  the  matter  to  an  immediate  decision. 
The  AntisociaUst  law  then  passed  by  the  Reichstag  made 
all  social-democratic  organizations  illegal,  as  well  as  any 
others  intended  to  subvert  the  existing  society.  The 
poHce  were  given  large  powers  to  dissolve  any  societies 
that  even,  in  their  judgment,  displayed  threatening  ten- 
dencies. Appeal  was  allowed  to  the  courts  against  the 
prohibitions  of  the  police,  but  the  courts  were  expected 
to  give  the  police  the  benefit  of  every  doubt.  The  right 
of  assembly  was  also  greatly  restricted.  The  police  might 
dissolve  any  meetings  in  which  social-democratic  ten- 
dencies appeared,  and  no  meeting  could  be  held  without 
permission  of  the  pohce.  Public  processions  and  fes- 
tivities were  to  be  regarded  as  meetings.  All  social- 
democratic  publications  were  interdicted,  prohibited 
works  were  to  be  confiscated,  and  apparatus  used  for  print- 
ing them  might  be  seized.  Any  person  who  became  or 
remained  a  member  of  a  prohibited  association  was  made 
liable  to  a  fine  of  500  marks,  or  three  months'  imprison- 
ment. Ofi&cers  of  societies  and  speakers  at  public  meet- 
ings might  be  imprisoned  from  one  to  twelve  months. 
The  circulation  of  a  prohibited  publication  entailed  a  fine 
not  exceeding  1000  marks,  or  imprisonment  up  to  six 
months.  Exceptional  powers  were  conferred  on  the 
police  in  cases  of  necessity,  known  as  a  stage  of  minor 
siege,  laying  additional  restrictions  on  the  right  of  as- 
sembly, forbidding  all  unlicensed  circulation  of  publica- 
tions and  prohibiting  the  carrying  of  weapons  without 
special  permission. 

These   restrictive   measures,   obviously   formed   upon 


98  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

the  methods  of  the  mediaeval  Inquisition  in  dealing  with 
heresy,  proved  so  utterly  ineffective  for  the  suppression 
of  Socialism  that  in  1893  the  total  vote  of  the  Social 
Democrats  had  risen  to  1,876,738,  and  their  representa- 
tion in  the  Reichstag  to  fifty-four.  In  the  meantime, 
Bismarck  had  undertaken  to  "dish"  the  socialists  by 
adopting  as  government  measures  certain  features  of 
their  programme.  In  1883  an  Act  providing  for  insur- 
ance against  sickness  was  passed,  which  included  all 
wage-earners  in  its  scope.  A  fund  was  created  by  weekly 
contributions,  of  which  at  first  the  workman  paid  three- 
fourths  and  the  employer  one-fourth.  Later  the  propor- 
tion was  changed  to  two-thirds  and  one-third,  while  the 
State  added  a  subvention.  In  1884  an  accident  insurance 
law  followed,  which  laid  on  employers  the  total  burden 
of  providing  for  injured  workmen.  In  1889  old  age  in- 
surance was  provided  by  law,  making  provision  for  every 
workman  on  the  completion  of  his  seventieth  year.  The 
burden  of  providing  this  fund  is  laid  equally  on  workmen 
and  their  employers. 

There  has  hardly  been  time  to  test  these  schemes 
fully,  and  different  views  regarding  them  are  found  in  the 
ranks  of  German  socialists,  as  well  as  outside.  On  the 
whole,  it  seems  clear  that  they  have  done  much  to  relieve 
misery  among  the  working-class,  and  make  their  poverty 
more  endurable ;  but  they  have  proved  to  be  mere  pallia- 
tives and  have  therefore  disappointed  those  who  expected 
them  to  make  a  real  contribution  towards  the  solution  of 
the  social  problem.  At  the  same  time,  the  principle  of 
the  laws  is  a  distinct  recognition  of  State  Socialism,  and 
a  step  in  that  direction  of  no  little  importance.  These 
Bismarck  laws  of  Germany  have  been  duplicated  in  nearly 


THE  FIRST  STAGE   OF   GERMAN  SOCIALISM         99 

I 

every  country  of  Europe,  so  that  working-men  no  longer 
have  to  face  injury  without  compensation  or  an  old  age 
of  either  starvation  or  pauperism. 

Germany  has  taken  other  long  strides  in  the  direction 
of  State  Socialism.  Forestry  has  been  under  State  con- 
trol for  generations,  and  even  on  private  land  a  man  may 
not  cut  his  timber  save  under  certain  regulations  and  re- 
strictions as  to  age  of  trees,  quantity,  and  immediate 
reforestation.  Canals  and  canalized  rivers  are  under 
State  control.  The  acquisition  of  railways  by  the  State 
has  been  vigorously  pushed  since  the  Franco-Prussian 
War,  until  now  not  more  than  one-tenth  of  the  total  mile- 
age is  in  private  hands,  and  these  are  mostly  unimpor- 
tant side-lines.  And  in  no  country  in  the  world  is  the 
train  service  more  prompt  and  convenient,  nowhere  is 
the  comfort  and  safety  of  the  passenger  more  carefully 
looked  after,  nowhere  are  baggage  and  freight  handled 
more  expeditiously  and  safely.  Passenger  rates  for  first 
and  second  class  are  about  the  same  as  in  America  for 
equal  accommodations,  and  a  third  class  is  provided,  with 
plainer  cars,  at  considerably  lower  rates  than  any  Amer- 
ican railway  offers,  save  in  the  "immigrant"  trains,  which 
Germans  would  think  fit  only  for  cattle. 

The  post  has  long  been  a  government  enterprise,  as 
with  us,  but  the  cheap  rates  for  carrying  parcels  by  post 
make  express  companies  a  superfluity ;  and  the  tele- 
graph and  telephone  lines  have  been  made  an  adjunct  of 
the  post,  so  that  in  a  single  building  one  may  send  his 
message  by  which  of  the  three  routes  he  may  please. 
Telegraph  rates  are  considerably  lower  than  with  us. 
The  State  mans  these  services,  in  large  part,  with  vet- 
erans from  the  army  and  navy,  which  partly  accounts 


lOO  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS  OF   JESUS 

for  the  precision  of  the  service  and  the  mingled  air  of 
courtesy  and  authority  that  the  American  traveller 
observes  in  German  officials.  It  is  impossible  to  travel 
in  Germany  and  not  become  favorably  disposed  toward 
the  idea  of  governmental  ownership  and  operation  of 
railways,  telegraphs,  and  telephones,  and  the  merging  of 
the  express  service  with  the  post.  Such  a  change  would 
seem  to  us  quite  a  step  in  the  direction  of  State  Socialism, 
yet  Germany  has  taken  it,  and  real  Socialism  seems  as 
far  off  as  ever. 

Moreover,  German  municipalities  have  made  far 
greater  progress  towards  collectivism  than  American. 
We  are  familiar  with  municipal  control  of  the  water  sup- 
ply, but  the  German  towns  add  to  their  common  enter- 
prises gas  and  electric  lighting  and  street  railways.  These 
latter  are  uniformly  electric,  except  in  a  few  cases  where 
steepness  of  hills  makes  cable  roads  a  necessity ;  and  the 
cars  are  far  more  beautiful  and  well-appointed  than  is 
usual  in  the  Eastern  cities  of  the  United  States  —  about 
on  a  par  with  those  in  our  more  progressive  Western 
towns  :  Minneapohs,  Denver,  Seattle.  Besides  such  en- 
terprises as  these,  most  municipalities  perform  other 
functions  even  more  socialistic  in  principle ;  for  example, 
they  provide  pawnbrokerage  at  cost  for  the  poor,  so  that 
small  loans  can  be  obtained  at  need  without  recourse  to 
money  sharks.  Municipal  savings-banks  are  also  com- 
mon, where  the  smaller  savings  are  received  and  the 
maximum  of  interest  is  offered  at  the  minimum  of  risk. 

And  perhaps  the  most  striking  fact  about  this  social- 
izing of  enterprises  is  that  it  has  not  been  done  by  social- 
ists. Their  numerical  strength  would  result  in  their  cap- 
ture of  most  of  the  municipal  governments,  but  the  law 


THE  FIRST   STAGE   OF   GERMAN,  i^OCIAL  ISM  :       mi 

expressly  provides  that  not  more  than  one-third  of  a 
municipal  council  shall  be  socialists.  In  spite  of  this 
restriction,  however,  the  great  preponderance  of  the 
Social  Democrats  in  most  of  the  towns  gives  them  a  moral 
influence  far  beyond  their  votes  in  the  council,  and  poli- 
cies favored  by  them  always  have  a  good  prospect  of 
adoption.  Many  towns  are  destroying  the  slums  by 
buying  up  the  land  and  erecting  on  it  model  houses,  which, 
while  rented  at  a  low  rate,  return  a  good  interest  on  the 
investment.  Others  lease  the  land  thus  acquired,  under 
severe  restrictions  as  to  the  character  of  the  houses  and 
their  rents.  The  city  of  Ulm,  for  example,  is  said  to  have 
acquired  and  now  to  control  80  per  cent  of  the  land  within 
its  limits. 

The  Social  Democracy  is  not  merely  a  few  officers  and 
a  mob,  —  as  a  political  party  exists  among  us,  —  but  a 
definite  organization,  with  a  constitution,  with  a  roll 
of  members  who  pay  regular  dues,  with  schools  and  pe- 
riodicals. It  has  branches  wherever  there  are  working- 
men,  and  they  elect  delegates  to  the  annual  Congress, 
which  is  the  governing  body.  The  enrolled  membership 
is  considerably  over  half  a  milHon,  and  at  the  last  election 
the  party  polled  3,250,000  votes.  When  the  American 
reader  considers  that  this  is  more  by  some  thousands  than 
the  votes  cast  for  both  Lincoln  and  Douglas  in  i860,  he 
can  better  measure  the  strength  of  this  party  to-day  in 
Germany.  If  there  were  a  fair  system  of  distribution 
of  seats  in  the  Reichstag,  the  party  would  have  115  mem- 
bers instead  of  43.^    The  present  electoral  divisions  were 

'  The  by-elcctions  have  been  almost  uniformly  favorable  to  the  so- 
cialists since  the  return  of  the  last  Reichstag.  In  igog  they  won  twenty- 
five  scats  in  the  Saxon  diet,  against  one  in  1907,  and  in  the  Baden  diet 
they  gained  eight  scats. 


I02  SQCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

fixed  in  187 1,  when  397  deputies  were  returned  for  a  popu- 
lation of  39,000,000.  Though  the  present  population  is 
60,000,000,  the  number  of  deputies  and  the  methods  of 
election  are  unchanged.  This  large  increase  of  population 
has  been  in  the  cities,  the  country  population  having 
decreased ;  and  it  is  precisely  in  the  cities  where  the 
socialists  are  strongest,  while  the  country  districts  are 
favorable  to  their  opponents.  It  therefore  comes  about 
that  the  Conservative  party,  though  it  polls  only  i  ,000,000 
votes,  has  59  deputies.  Similar  conditions  prevail  in 
nearly  every  European  country;  the  propertied  class 
always  has  some  advantage,  either  in  the  suffrage  itself 
or  in  the  distribution  of  seats.  It  may  easily  be  supposed 
that  this  sort  of  unfairness  does  not  make  the  socialists 
any  more  content  with  the  present  order. 

The  socialistic  propaganda  is  varied  and  formidable. 
There  are  65  daily  papers  in  Germany  devoted  to 
their  interests,  and  12  periodicals.  Their  leading  daily, 
Vorwarts,  has  a  circulation  of  120,000,  and  their  comic 
weekly,  Der  Wahre  Jacob,  claims  230,000  copies.  A 
school  for  the  training  of  workers  has  about  thirty  stu- 
dents in  regular  attendance,  and  twenty-eight  organizing 
secretaries  are  at  work  in  the  field.  The  reliance  of  the 
party  is  on  education  and  persuasion,  not  on  violent  revo- 
lution ;  and  they  seldom  indulge  in  spectacular  demon- 
strations, believing  that  more  is  to  be  gained  by  parlia- 
mentary methods. 

It  is  often  urged  as  an  objection  to  Socialism  that 
socialists  are  not  agreed  among  themselves.  Was  there 
ever  a  party  that  was  agreed  ?  Among  all  considerable 
bodies  of  men  that  act  together,  there  can  always  be 
distinguished  a  right  and  left  wing,  radicals  and  conserva- 


THE   FIRST  STAGE  OF   GERMAN  SOCIALISM        103 

tives,  and  usually  a  centre  or  moderate  group.  The  laws 
of  human  nature  cannot  be  altered  by  Socialism,  and  the 
inherent  temperamental  differences  of  men  will  always 
cause  such  divisions.  We  need  not  be  surprised,  there- 
fore, that  a  group  generally  known  as  "Revisionists" 
has  risen  among  the  German  Social  Democracy,  and 
now  composes  about  one-third  of  its  strength.  It 
leader,  Dr.  Edouard  Bernstein  (b.  1850),  is  the  editor 
of  Vorwdrts.  He  maintains  that  the  economics  and  pro- 
gramme of  Marx,  which  have  become  socialistic  ortho- 
doxy, require  revision  all  along  the  line.  Marx  believed 
in  an  immediate  revolution,  which  is  now  seen  to  have 
been  an  error,  and  the  working-men  are  not  content  to 
see  their  victory  postponed  to  a  paulo-post-future,  —  they 
not  unnaturally  desire  immediate  results.  The  Revision- 
ists say,  "Support  us,  and  you  can  obtain  your  social 
reforms  by  instalments."  The  orthodox  Marxians,  thus 
far  the  majority  of  the  party,  say,  "Support  us,  and  in- 
stead of  a  small  slice  off  the  loaf  now  and  then,  you  will 
get  the  whole  loaf  at  once."     But  when? 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  since  the  Franco-Prussian 
War  Germany  has  rapidly  forged  ahead  as  a  manufactur- 
ing nation,  and  now  disputes  with  Great  Britain  the  com- 
mercial supremacy  of  Europe.  Socialism  cannot,  of 
course,  be  credited  with  this  advance,  but  a  remarkable 
development  of  State  Socialism  has  gone  hand  in  hand 
with  the  most  striking  industrial  progress  ever  witnessed 
in  modern  Europe.  For  this  increase  of  manufactures 
is  mainly  due,  not  to  any  superior  natural  advantages  of 
Germany,  but  to  a  systematic  attempt  to  apply  to  in- 
dustrialism that  advance  in  scientific  knowledge  in  which 
Germany  has  led  the  world.     Continuous  aid  has  been 


104  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

given  by  the  government  to  investigations  in  applied 
science,  and  systematic  encouragement  and  direction 
have  been  given  by  the  State  to  all  promising  forms  of  new 
industrial  enterprise.  The  result  is  that  no  other  coun- 
try has  paralleled  Germany's  increase  of  exports,  and 
every  country  in  the  world  is  feeling  the  effect  of  her 
competition. 

This  great  industrial  development  has  been  accom- 
panied with  a  concentration  of  wealth  in  the  hands  of  a 
few,  much  as  in  the  United  States,  but  not  in  so  exten- 
sive a  growth  of  the  Trust.     Instead  of  that  form  of  con- 
soHdation  of  capital,  industry  is  rather  "syndicated" 
in  Germany.     These  industrial  syndicates  receive  orders 
and  allot  them  to  the  establishment  in  which  they  can 
be  most  economically  filled.     By  this  method  of  eliminat- 
ing competition  and  securing  the  cheapest  production 
possible,  although  raw  materials  cost  more  in  Germany 
than  in  England  (this  is  especially  true  of  iron,  most  of 
which  must  be  imported),  and  labor  costs  quite  as  much, 
Germany  is  able  to  rival  England  in  the  markets  of  the 
world  and  often  to  undersell  the  latter.     The  German 
capitalists,  who  did  not  fail  to  lament  that  they  were 
about  to  be  ruined  by  Bismarck's  social  schemes,  have 
nevertheless  greatly  prospered  under  them;    while  the 
wage-earners  have  gained  a  larger  share  of  the  benefits 
of  this  industrial  progress  than  their  brothers  in  America. 
There  is  an  object-lesson  here  for  American  workers. 
They  have  insisted  on  the  poKcy  of  "keeping  out  of  poli- 
tics," and  have  had  for  their  only  reward  thus  far  that 
other  parties  have  exploited  them  and  contemptuously 
refused  to  do  anything  of  value  for  them.     The  work- 
ing-men deserve   the   contempt  with  which  pohticians 


THE   FIRST   STAGE  OF  GERMAN  SOCIALISM        105 

secretly,  and  sometimes  openly,  treat  them.  That  is  to 
say,  the  man  who  has  a  ballot  in  his  hands  and  is  not  in- 
telligent enough  to  use  it  for  his  own  protection,  does  not 
deserve  any  political  consideration  and  will  certainly 
receive  none.  Until  the  American  working-man  learns 
from  the  example  of  his  brothers  abroad  that  he  has  been 
quite  in  the  wrong  in  this  matter,  that  he  will  never  get 
anything  of  value  for  himself  until  he  goes  into  politics 
and  uses  his  ballot  to  advance  his  interests,  and  not  to 
advance  the  interests  of  capitalists,  he  will  make  little 
or  no  progress. 

The  American  working-man  enjoys  one  enormous  ad- 
vantage over  his  brother  in  Europe  :  political  democracy 
has  been  achieved  here ;  he  may  cast  his  ballot  freely,  and 
it  will  usually  be  honestly  counted.  He  has  only  to  de- 
cide what  he  wishes  and  it  is  his ;  he  has  it  in  his  power  at 
any  time  to  overturn  completely  existing  laws  and  con- 
stitutions, or  to  modify  them  according  to  his  will.  His 
social  grievances  will  exist  only  so  long  as  he  himself  does 
not  know  what  he  wants.  But  in  every  European  coun- 
try —  even  France,  nominally  democratic,  is  hardly  an 
exception  —  the  attainment  of  political  democracy  is  yet 
far  off,  and  the  working-man  is  compelled  to  struggle  first 
of  all  for  that  which  the  American  already  possesses,  the 
power  to  change  the  laws.  And  yet,  in  spite  of  that,  it 
seems  not  impossible  that  the  social  grievances  of  the 
foreign  working-men  will  be  redressed  first ;  for  they  are 
alive  to  their  situation,  and  are  intelligently  taking  the 
right  course  to  secure  redress  of  grievances,  while  the 
American  worker  remains  blind  and  inactive. 


IV 

KARL    MARX    AND    MODERN    "SCIENTIFIC"/ 

SOCIALISM 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Sources : — 
Maex  and  Engels,  The  Communist  Manifesto.     Chicago,  1909. 
Marx,  Capital,  3  vols.     Chicago,  1909. 

,   A   Contribution   to   the   Critique   of    Political    Economy. 

Chicago,  191 1. 
Engels,  Socialism,  Utopian  and  Scientific.     Chicago,  1900. 

Socialistic  expositions :  — 
Spargo,  Karl  Marx  and  his  Life  and  Work.     New  York,  1910. 
Kautsky,  The  Social  Revolution.     Chicago,  1902. 

,  The  Road  to  Power.     Chicago,  1901. 

LoRiA,  The  Economic  Foimdations  of  Society.     Chicago,  1899. 

Critical,  but  judicial :  — 

Bernstein,  Evolutionary  Socialism :  a  Criticism  and  an  Affirma- 
tion, "Socialist  Library."     New  York,  1909. 

Menger,  The  Right  to  the  Whole  Produce  of  Labor.  New  York, 
1899. 

SoMBART,  Socialism  and  the  Social  Movement  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century.     New  York,  1898. 

SCHAEFFLE, The  Impossibility of  Social  Democracy,  "Social  Science 
Series,"  1892. 

Shaw,  Municipal  Government  in  Continental  Europe.  New 
York,  1895.  (An  impartial  scientific  study  of  a  related  sub- 
ject.) 


IV 


KARL  MARX  AND  MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM 


Karl  Marx,  who  is  commonly  regarded  as  the  founder 
of  modern  "scientific"  Socialism,  is  at  any  rate  its  chief 
prophet  and  spokesman.  Few  men  of  the  nineteenth 
century  had  so  wide  an  influence,  for  good  or  evil ;  few 
have  been  so  often  quoted  and  so  loyally  followed  by 
multitudes  of  disciples,  all  admiring,  if  not  always  com- 
prehending. And  in  his  case  there  were  no  adventitious 
aids  to  influence.  His  hold  on  his  followers  was  not 
gained  by  gifts  of  eloquence,  such  as  made  leaders  of 
Kossuth  and  O'Connell ;  nor  by  skill  in  the  leadership  of 
men,  such  as  made  Parnell  at  one  time  the  uncrowned 
king  of  Ireland.  In  Marx's  case  we  behold  the  triumph 
of  sheer  intellect,  inspired  by  genuine  greatness  of  soul. 
Whatever  his  economic  errors,  he  sincerely  believed  that 
his  teachings  were  the  truth ;  and  to  the  working  out  of 
his  ideas  and  the  inculcation  of  them  among  the  labor- 
ing classes,  he  freely  gave  his  life.  In  what  was  to  him  a 
sacred  cause,  he  endured  much  poverty  and  suffering, 
thereby  again  justifying  the  daring  words  of  Heine : 
"  Wherever  a  great  soul  gives  utterance  to  its  thoughts, 
there  also  is  Golgotha." 

Marx  was  born  in  Treves,  in  1818.  His  family  held 
a  good  social  position.     His  father,  born  a  Jew,  was  an 

109 


no  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

official  in  the  civil  service,  and  had  embraced  Christian- 
ity, possibly  to  advance  his  career,  but  certainly  of  his 
own  accord.  Young  Marx  was  educated  for  the  bar  at 
the  universities  of  Bonn  and  Berlin,  at  the  time  of  Hegel's 
ascendency,  and  became  greatly  absorbed  in  the  study  of 
philosophy,  so  that  he  abandoned  the  study  of  law  and 
began  to  fit  himself  for  a  university  chair.  Soon  after 
taking  his  degree  he  was  drawn  into  journalism,  possibly 
at  first  as  a  means  of  support,  and  almost  inevitably  into 
politics.  As  editor  of  the  Rheinische  Zeitung,  he  criticised 
the  government  with  intolerable  boldness,  with  the  re- 
sult that  in  1843  the  paper  was  suppressed. 

Believing  that  France  would  afford  him  a  better  field 
for  the  propagation  of  his  liberal  opinions,  and  also  offer 
special  advantages  for  the  study  of  political  and  social 
questions,  Marx  went  to  Paris.  Here  he  formed  a  close 
intimacy  with  another  German,  hardly  less  noteworthy 
than  himself,  with  whom  his  future  was  to  be  closely 
united,  Frederic  Engels.  Banished  from  France  by 
Guizot,  then  prime  minister,  because  of  his  persistent 
criticism  of  the  government  of  Prussia,  Marx  went  to 
Brussels.  Here  there  was  a  decided  advance  in  his 
opinions  towards  radicalism,  and  he  avowed  himself  a 
communist  —  by  which,  however,  he  meant  what  is  now 
called  a  socialist.  Together  with  Engels  he  issued  "The 
Communistic  Manifesto"  of  1847,  which  concluded  with 
the  words  often  since  quoted  in  socialistic  literature: 
"The  proletarians  have  nothing  to  lose  but  their  chains ; 
they  have  the  world  to  gain.  Proletarians  of  all  lands, 
unite." 

Marx  then  returned  to  Germany  and  founded  a  new 
journal,  the  life  of  which  was  extinguished  by  the  Revolu- 


MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  m 

tion  of  1848,  and  its  editor  was  banished.  He  soon  after 
took  up  his  abode  in  London,  where  he  lived  until  his 
death  in  1883.  In  1869  he  was  joined  by  his  friend  Engels, 
before  which  time  they  had  together  founded  the  In- 
ternational Working-men's  Association  (1864).  Marx 
drafted  the  constitution,  and  the  founding  of  the  Inter- 
national must  be  regarded  as  his  chief  contribution  to  the 
organized  Socialism  of  his  generation.  Considered  as  a 
practical  movement,  the  International  was  a  magnificent 
failure.  It  did  little  more  than  provoke  the  exaggerated 
fears  of  half  the  governments  of  Europe.  Six  conven- 
tions were  held  before  the  Paris  Commune  (187 1),  which 
was  in  no  ofiicial  way  connected  with  the  International, 
but  was  generally  believed  to  be  a  legitimate  develop- 
ment of  its  principles.  In  these  later  years  Marx  lost 
his  hold  on  the  organization  and  came  to  regard  it  as  a 
Frankenstein  monster,  of  which  he  was  somewhat  fearful. 
He  did  not  himself  favor  or  expect  a  violent  revolution  for 
the  establishment  of  the  social  State,  but  believed  that 
the  new  order  was  rapidly  coming  by  the  way  of  peaceful 
evolution.  Engels  survived  his  friend  till  1895,  becoming 
his  biographer  and  editor. 

n 

The  most  important  contribution  of  Marx  to  Socialism 
was  not  in  the  field  of  organization  and  propagandism, 
for  which  he  had  little  fitness,  but  in  the  field  of  literature. 
In  1859  he  published  his  "Contributions  to  the  Criti- 
cism of  Political  Economy,"  which  was  important  not 
so  much  for  his  discussion  of  purely  economic  theories,  as 
for  the  working  out  of  a  new  interpretation  of  history  in 
terms  of  economics.     His  theory  has  become  generally 


112  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

known,  especially  in  socialistic  literature,  by  the  unfor- 
tunate title  of  *'the  materialistic  interpretation  of  his- 
tory." It  is,  in  brief,  this :  The  basic  problem  of  man, 
in  all  ages,  has  been  the  problem  of  subsistence,  how  to 
get  a  living  out  of  the  earth.  This  primal  necessity  has 
conditioned  and  directed  all  social  development.  The 
conditions  of  physical  life,  the  relations  of  production  to 
consumption,  are  the  prime  factors  in  human  progress. 
The  transformations  of  society,  the  growth  of  institutions, 
are  all  traceable  to  economic  conditions ;  and  all  history 
is,  at  bottom,  the  story  of  an  unending  struggle  between 
nations  and  classes  for  the  control  of  the  means  of  sub- 
sistence. We  have  already  considered  this  theory,  and 
some  of  its  applications,  and  need  only  add  that  since 
j6rst  propounded  by  Marx  it  has  had  an  increasing  in- 
fluence on  all  study  of  history. 

Marx  was  an  industrious  writer,  but  we  need  not  con- 
cern ourselves  with  the  mass  of  his  work ;  for  easily 
his  most  important  book  was  his  treatise  on  Capital.^ 
Indeed,  it  is  the  greatest  book,  in  more  than  one  sense, 
that  the  socialistic  movement  has  yet  produced.  So 
wide  has  been  its  vogue  that  it  has  often  been  called  the 
Bible  of  Socialism,  and  it  perhaps  justifies  the  title, 
in  that  it  is  more  revered  than  read.  Few  socialists  pos- 
sess a  copy  of  this  costly  three-volume  work,  and  still 
fewer  are  personally  familiar  with  its  contents.  It  would 
not  be  surprising  to  discover,  in  truth,  that  "Capital" 
has  been,  and  still  is,  read  more  extensively  outside  the 

*  The  first  part  of  "Capital"  appeared  in  1867,  and  a  second  edition 
was  published  by  the  author  in  1873.  The  second  part  was  edited  by 
Frederic  Engels  and  issued  in  1885,  two  years  after  the  author's  death, 
while  the  third  and  most  valuable  part  was  delayed  until  1894. 


MODERN    "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  113 

ranks  of  avowed  socialists  than  inside.  But  that  is  by 
no  means  to  deny  the  extent  of  its  influence  among  social- 
ists themselves.  The  teachings  of  Marx  have  been  popu- 
larized and  scattered  abroad,  through  speeches,  tracts, 
and  other  means,  until  not  only  socialists  themselves,  but 
many  others,  have  become  familiar  with  his  chief  ideas, 
even  when  they  do  not  clearly  know  whence  the  doc- 
trines came. 

One  who  studies  "Capital"  carefully  —  and  he  must 
study  it,  to  get  anything  from  it  —  will  be  likely  to  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  author  owes  no  small  part  of 
his  fame  for  originality  to  his  invention  of  a  new  ter- 
minology for  old  economic  ideas.  The  rest  of  his  great 
repute  as  a  socialistic  economist  is  mainly  due  to  his 
ability  to  say  a  small  thing  in  a  very  large  way.  It  is 
truly  marvellous  how  Marx  can  take  an  economic  truism, 
wrap  it  up  in  cumbrous  jargon,  half  philosophic,  half 
scientific,  add  a  show  of  elaborate  mathematical  demon- 
stration that  2  -h  2  really  does  equal  4,  and  present  his 
conclusion  in  the  guise  of  a  profound  truth,  a  contribu- 
tion to  human  thought  of  the  greatest  possible  value.  It 
is  time  that  somebody  punctured  this  swollen  German 
windbag  and  reduced  it  to  its  natural  proportions.  The 
involved  style  of  the  book  makes  it  very  difficult  reading, 
even  in  the  English  translation,  but  there  is  generally 
light  enough  to  make  the  darkness  visible,  and  by  hard 
struggling  one  may  usually  come  at  the  meaning  —  when 
there  is  any. 

ni 

The  foundation  of  Marx's  system,  as  of  all  systems  of 
economics  before  him,  is  a  series  of  definitions,  from 
which  everything  is  deduced.     These  must  be  scrutinized, 


114  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

therefore,  with  the  greatest  care.  In  the  opening  sen- 
tence of  his  book  he  defines  wealth  as  ''an  immense  accu- 
mulation of  commodities,"  and  a  commodity  is  defined 
as  an  object  that  satisfies  a  human  want.  That  defini- 
tion of  wealth  was  once  valid,  perhaps,  but  no  longer 
applies  to  social  conditions.  Hoarded  supplies  of  sur- 
plus products  now  constitute  a  small  part  of  wealth.  The 
wealth  of  a  Rockefeller  or  a  Carnegie  is  not  measured 
chiefly  by  the  quantity  of  oil  or  steel  or  other  commodities 
that  they  own,  but  by  what  we  call  "securities,"  certifi- 
cates of  stock,  bonds,  mortgages,  etc.  These  securities 
are  titles  to  the  possession,  on  an  enormous  scale,  not 
of  an  immense  accumulation  of  commodities,  but  of 
the  means  of  producing  commodities ;  and  the  social  sig- 
nificance of  such  possession  is  that  it  enables  men  of 
wealth  to  command  the  labor  or  services  of  other  men.^ 
Nine-tenths  of  mankind,  in  other  words,  live  by  the  suf- 
ferance and  at  the  will  of  the  other  tenth,  who  possess 
practically  all  the  means  of  living.  The  entire  signifi- 
cance of  Socialism  is  that  it  challenges  this  state  of 
things  and  asks.  On  what  ethical  theory  can  such  mon- 
strous inequality  of  lot  among  men  be  justified  ? 

Of  greater  importance  than  his  theory  of  wealth  is 
Marx's  theory  of  value.  He  finds  that  there  are  three 
kinds  of  value :  use- value,  exchange- value,  and  surplus- 
value.  As  this  theory  is  the  corner-stone  of  his  system, 
we  must  examine  it  with  exceptional  care. 

1  This  had  been  pointed  out  by  Ruskin,  as  early  as  1862,  in  "Unto 
This  Last,"  Essay  II,  "On  the  Veins  of  Wealth."  It  used  to  be  the  fash- 
ion to  ridicule  Ruskin  as  an  economist,  but  of  late  he  has  been  coming 
to  his  own.  He  was  among  the  first  to  insist  that  economic  facts  and 
forces  have  a  social  significance,  and  must  be  subjected  to  ethical  stand- 
ards. 


MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  115 

The  use- value  of  a  commodity  is  what  other  economists 
call  utility,  its  capacity  to  satisfy  a  human  want  of  some 
sort.  Exchange-value,  on  the  contrar}^  appears  at  first 
sight  to  be  something  quite  apart  from  commodities, 
viz.  a  proportion  in  which  values  of  one  sort  are  ex- 
changed for  values  of  another  sort.  Since  this  propor- 
tion is  constantly  changing,  it  seems  to  be  accidental  and 
purely  relative.  But  a  closer  analysis  shows  that  when 
we  say  one  commodity  is  equal  in  value  to  another  com- 
modity, this  equation  is  possible  only  by  the  existence 
of  something  common  to  both  as  a  term  of  measurement. 
Each  of  the  two  members  of  the  equation  must  be  reduc- 
ible to  this  com.mon  element  before  equality  can  be 
affirmed  between  them.  In  general,  therefore,  exchange- 
values  must  be  capable  of  expression  in  terms  of  some- 
thing common  to  all,  of  which  they  represent  a  greater  or 
less  quantity.  This  common  element  in  all  commodities, 
by  which  they  may  be  measured,  must  be  labor ;  since 
all  are  products  of  labor  that  is  the  one  invariable  ele- 
ment that  enters  into  all,  and  by  which  they  may  be 
measured  and  compared.  Two  sentences  sum  up  this 
theory  of  value:  "A  use- value  or  useful  article,  there- 
fore, has  value  only  because  human  labor  in  the  abstract 
has  been  embodied  or  materialized  in  it."  ^  "  That  which 
determines  the  magnitude  of  value  or  exchange-value  of 
any  article  is  the  amount  of  labor  socially  necessary  for 
its  production."  ^ 

I.  This  theory  of  value  contains  a  self-contradiction. 
Marx  begins  by  saying  that  the  utility  of  a  commodity 
constitutes  its  use-value  —  that  is,  the  capacity  of  the 

»  "Capital."  p.  5. 
2  Uid.  p.  6. 


Il6  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

thing  to  satisfy  a  human  want.  Later  he  says  that  use- 
value  exists  only  because  human  labor  has  been  embodied 
in  the  commodity.  Both  cannot  be  true.  As  a  matter 
of  induction  from  experience,  the  first  statement  stands 
as  true :  the  use- value  of  any  commodity  is  its  capacity 
to  satisfy  a  human  want,  quite  irrespective  of  the  labor 
embodied  in  it.  For  example,  a  man  opening  an  oyster 
finds  a  fine  pearl  —  that  has  frequently  happened.  An- 
other man  spends  days  in  hard  v/ork,  digging  a  well,  but 
fails  to  find  water  —  many  a  farmer  has  had  that  ex- 
perience. The  first  man  has  expended  no  labor,  but  he 
has  something  that  satisfies  a  human  want  and  so  is  very 
valuable.  The  second  man  has  expended  great  labor, 
but  that  empty  hole  in  the  ground  satisfies  no  human 
want,  and  is  utterly  without  value.  An  American  dis- 
ciple of  Marx  virtually  surrenders  the  whole  contention 
that  labor  is  the  source  of  value,  when  he  says:  "If  I 
make  something  to  satisfy  some  want  of  my  own,  it  will 
have  no  value  unless  it  will  satisfy  the  want  of  some  one 
else  also."  ^  A  useful  article  has  value,  not  because  labor 
has  been  embodied  in  it,  but  because  it  is  useful.  All 
the  labor  of  mankind  since  the  creation  could  not  make 
a  thing  valuable  if  it  were  not  useful.  The  backache 
value  of  an  article  may  or  may  not  be  actual  value,  — 
it  depends  on  whether  the  backache  has  been  wisely 
incurred. 

2.  Marx's  theory  of  value  notably  fails  to  correspond 
to  fact  when  applied  to  land.  Land  should  be  worth, 
according  to  the  theory,  —  which  entirely  ignores  what 
nature  contributes  to  the  value  of  any  commodity,  — 
the  amount  of  labor  that  has  been  expended  on  it;   in 

1  Spargo,  "Socialism,"  p.  240. 


MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  117 

other  words,  what  we  call  "improvements."  But  this 
is  notoriously  not  the  fact.  Land  is  usually  worth  much 
more  than  the  improvements ;  in  exceptional  cases  it  may 
be  worth  much  less.  Even  the  improvements  themselves 
are  not  valuable  according  to  the  labor  embodied  in  them. 
Those  made  by  one  occupier  of  the  land  may  be  considered 
undesirable  by  the  next  occupant,  in  which  case  they  will 
be  worthless  and  may  even  be  an  encumbrance.^  On  the 
other  hand,  it  often  happens  that  land  on  which  the  owner 
expends  no  labor  whatever  continually  increases  in  value, 
simply  because  population  increases  in  that  locality  and 
so  the  demand  for  land  tends  steadily  to  surpass  the 
supply.^ 

The  thing  that  makes  land  valuable  anywhere  is  that 
somebody  wishes  to  occupy  it.  Whether  labor  has  or 
has  not  been  expended  on  it,  is  an  irrelevant  circumstance. 
Witness  the  fact  that  in  New  England  there  are  to-day 
hundreds  of  abandoned  farms,  on  which  the  labor  of 
generations  has  been  expended  —  abandoned  because 
nobody  cares  to  live  on  them,  or  is  willing  to  buy  them  at 
any  price.  But  besides  this  qualitative  factor  in  the 
value  of  land  there  is  a  quantitative  :  land  is  limited,  and 

'  "  Improvements"  are  to  a  certain  degree,  though  to  a  less  degree  than 
the  land  itself,  subject  to  the  same  law  of  value.  Let  a  rich  man  build  a 
"palace"  on  Fifth  Avenue,  in  New  York,  and  an  equally  costly  "cottage" 
in  a  remote  spot  by  the  sea.  The  house  will  be  worth  more  than  the 
cottage  at  a  forced  sale,  simply  because  it  is  desired  by  more  people,  since 
it  stands  in  the  most  fashionable  location  of  the  largest  city  in  America. 
The  "palace"  will  therefore  bring  under  the  hammer  something  like  its 
cost,  while  the  lonely  "cottage"  will  sell  for  a  small  fraction  of  its  cost. 

*  This  increase  in  the  value  of  land  without  the  owner's  labor  is  now 
generally  known  as  "  the  unearned  increment,"  and  a  heavy  tax  is  levied 
on  it  in  the  famous  Lloyd-George  budget  of  1909,  as  well  as  in  some  of 
our  ,\merican  States,  on  the  ground  that  society  at  large  has  a  right  to 
take  back  at  least  a  portion  of  a  value  that  society  at  large  has  conferred. 


Il8  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

SO  capable  of  being  appropriated,  as  the  other  bounties 
of  nature,  the  sea  and  the  atmosphere,  are  not.  These 
two  factors  —  the  strength  of  human  desire  for  posses- 
sion of  the  soil,  and  the  hmited  quantity  —  determine 
the  value  of  land,  usually  without  any  question  of  the 
labor  expended  on  it. 

3.  Marx's  theory  contradicts  universal  experience  re- 
garding things  produced  by  hum.an  labor.  The  value 
of  each  article,  he  tells  us,  must  be  scientifically  deter- 
mined by  the  amount  of  labor-time  required  for  its  pro- 
duction. In  general,  the  greater  the  productiveness  of 
labor  the  less  labor-time  is  required  to  produce  a  given 
article,  the  less  is  the  amount  of  labor-material  in  the 
article,  and  the  less  therefore  is  its  value.  Per  contra,  the 
less  productive  labor  is,  the  more  labor-time  is  required 
to  produce  a  given  article,  and  the  greater  is  its  value. 
We  are  able,  therefore,  to  state  this  general  formula  for 
value :  The  value  of  a  commodity  varies  directly  as  the 
quantity  and  inversely  as  the  productiveness  of  the  labor 
incorporated  in  it. 

This  is  a  good  example  of  Marx's  impressive  quasi- 
mathematical  ''proofs"  of  his  theories.  The  formula 
has  a  very  convincing  air  and  is  well  calculated  to  make" 
the  thoughtless  believe  that  here  is  a  law  quite  as  true 
and  nearly  as  important  as  gravitation,  and  that  the 
name  of  Marx  should  be  ranked  alongside  of  Newton's 
among  the  great  men  of  science.  But  the  difference  be- 
tween Marx's  formula  and  the  law  of  gravitation  is  that 
Newton's  law  will  bear  every  test,  while  Marx's  breaks 
down  at  the  first  attempt  to  apply  it.  For  this  is  what  the 
Marxian  law  means,  in  a  practical  case :  the  more  un- 
skilful a  shoemaker,  the  more  valuable  will  be  the  shoes 


MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  119 

that  he  makes ;  if  he  puts  twice  as  much  labor  into  mak- 
ing a  pair  of  shoes  as  his  more  skilful  neighbor,  his  shoes 
are  just  twice  as  valuable ;  even  though  the  latter  makes 
his  in  half  the  time  and  makes  them  better,  they  are  less 
valuable,  because  they  embody  less  labor.  A  watch 
made  by  hand  is  more  valuable  than  a  watch  made  by 
machinery,  though  the  latter  is  the  better  timepiece,  be- 
cause the  former  represents  more  labor.  Or,  reducing 
the  formula  to  its  ultimate  absurdity,  in  a  shop  where 
men  of  different  capacities  are  employed,  the  better  the 
workman  and  the  faster  he  turns  out  good  product,  the 
less  he  ought  to  be  paid ;  while  the  more  stupid  and  slow 
he  is,  the  more  valuable  is  his  product ! 

It  may  be  that  Marx  perceived  the  absurdities  in- 
volved in  his  formula ;  at  any  rate  he  devised  a  modi- 
fication of  it  that  was  believed  to  free  it  from  undesirable 
inferences  :  value  is  to  be  measured  by  the  average  labor- 
time  socially  necessary  for  the  production  of  an  article. 
And  his  illustrations  of  his  principle  make  it  plain  that 
he  means  by  "average  labor-time  socially  necessary" 
exactly  what  previous  economists  meant  by  the  term 
"lowest  cost  of  production."  The  exchange  value  of 
any  article  tends  to  be  lowered  by  competition  to  some- 
where near  the  least  amount  for  which  it  can  be  made. 
This  will,  of  course,  be  the  general  effect  of  competi- 
tion under  the  law  of  supply  and  demand.  But  what 
is  left  of  the  theory  that  labor  is  the  exclusive  source 
of  value  ? 

4.  The  theory  neglects  some  factors  of  value  that  must 
be  taken  into  consideration.  So  far  from  labor  constitut- 
ing the  total  element  of  value,  nature  always  contributes 
something,  generally  a  great  part,  and  sometimes  by  far 


120  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

the  larger  part,  of  value.  Take  coal,  for  example ;  the 
labor  of  mining  coal  is  considerable,  but  its  fitness  for 
fuel  is  wholly  nature's  gift,  and  constitutes  its  chief  value. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  placer-mining  of  gold  :  the  chief 
value  of  the  gold  lies  in  the  intrinsic  qualities  of  the  metal ; 
comparatively  little  labor  brings  it  to  hght  and  makes  it 
available.  So  with  manufactured  articles.  A  pair  of 
shoes  embodies  considerable  labor,  but  the  chief  value  of 
the  shoes  lies  in  the  fact  that  nature  has  given  qualities 
to  the  skins  of  animals  that  cannot  be  found  in  any  other 
material ;  men  demand  shoes  made  of  leather,  and  will 
accept  no  substitute.  Marx's  contention  is  contradicted 
by  a  thousand  everyday  facts.  Labor  without  nature 
is  only  a  beating  of  the  air,  and  can  never  create  value. 

As  in  the  case  of  land,  so  with  ail  other  commodities, 
one  factor  of  value  is  the  limitation  in  the  quantity  of  a 
useful  article,  so  that  human  desire  is  never  fully  satis- 
fied. Nothing  can  be  more  useful  to  man,  absolutely  in- 
dispensable indeed,  than  air  and  water,  but  as  they  exist 
in  practically  unlimited  quantities  they  have  no  economic 
value.  When,  in  peculiar  circumstances,  water  becomes 
scarce  and  is  desired  at  the  same  time  by  many  people, 
it  at  once  becomes  valuable.  The  man  who  then  has 
control  of  a  supply,  which  may  not  have  cost  him  a  par- 
ticle of  labor,  —  it  may  be  a  natural  spring,  —  can  sell  it 
to  men  who  have  no  water  and  must  have  some,  for  prac- 
tically any  price  he  chooses  to  demand.  So  when  Mr. 
Spargo  tells  us  that  "the  value  of  diamonds  is  determined 
by  the  amount  of  labor-expenditure  necessary  on  the 
average  to  procure  them,"  he  contradicts  every  known 
fact  about  gems.^     Much  more  to  the  point  was  this 

1  Spargo,  "Socialism,"  p.  254. 


MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  121 

dialogue  in  a  recent  daily  newspaper :  ''Hobbs :  What  is 
the  best  way  to  find  out  what  a  diamond  is  worth  ? 
Dobbs:  Try  to  sell  it."  Now  this,  which  was  printed 
merely  as  a  jest,  is  sound  economics.  To  try  to  sell  a 
diamond  is,  in  fact,  the  only  way  to  determine  its  value. 
That  value  is  not  in  the  least  dependent  on  the  amount  of 
labor  embodied  in  the  stone ;  it  depends  first,  on  the  de- 
sire of  men  (and  more  especially  women)  to  possess  dia- 
monds, which  is  what  economists  mean  by  their  utility, 
and  secondly,  on  the  comparative  rarity  of  the  gem.  The 
labor  required  to  mine  a  diamond  at  Kimberly  will  mine 
many  tons  of  coal  at  Scranton ;  but  carbon  in  the  form 
of  coal  is  plentiful,  while  the  crystallized  carbon  of  the 
diamond  is  exceeding  scarce  —  hence  there  is  no  com- 
parison between  their  values. 

5.  The  distinction  that  Marx  attempts  to  establish 
between  use- value  and  exchange- value  does  not  exist, 
or  rather  it  has  no  significance.  Use-value  is  applied  to 
an  article  useful  to  the  producer,  and  not  intended  for 
another  purpose,  as  the  stone  axe  of  a  savage.  Exchange- 
value  is  applied  to  an  article  that  will  be  useful  to  some 
other  than  the  producer  and  is  intended  for  sale,  as  the 
modern  steel  axe.  But  value  in  either  case  depends  on 
utility  —  in  the  one  case  to  the  producer,  in  the  other  to 
the  prospective  buyer.  The  two  values  are  identical  in 
nature,  and  the  distinction  is  a  purely  verbal  one,  corre- 
sponding to  no  social  realities.  By  such  jugglings  with 
words  do  the  Marxians  deceive  themselves  —  and  others.^ 

1  Marx  makes  the  ridiculous  statement  that  "one  use- value  is  just  as 
good  as  another,"  and  it  is  probably  his  failure  to  see  the  absurdity  of 
that  assumption  that  led  him  so  astray  in  his  whole  theory  of  value. 
"What  man  is  there  of  you,  who,  if  his  son  shall  ask  a  loaf,  will  give  him 
a  stone?"     But  why  not,  if  one  use-value  is  as  good  as  another? 


122  SOCIALISM  AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

It  becomes  clear  in  the  end  that  Marx  has  defined  not 
what  value  is,  but  what  he  wishes  it  to  be.  Ruskin,  with 
a  similar  purpose,  offered  a  better  definition,  when  he 
said  that  "Just  payment  of  labor  consists  in  a  sum  of 
money  which  would  approximately  obtain  equivalent 
labor  at  a  future  time."  ^  This  definition  would  hold 
good  if  all  labor  were  wisely  directed  to  the  production  of 
articles  fitted  to  satisfy  human  wants;  but,  whether 
from  bad  calculation  or  from  unskilful  effort,  much  labor 
is  ill-directed  and  results  in  production  of  articles  unfitted, 
or  imperfectly  fitted,  to  supply  wants.  Or,  possibly  the 
articles  are  good  in  themselves,  but  more  of  certain  sorts 
have  been  produced  than  are  necessary  to  supply  the 
wants  of  men  at  that  time.  In  such  cases,  the  labor 
cannot  be  paid  a  sum  that  would  procure  its  equivalent 
at  another  time,  because  it  has  been  wasted,  in  whole  or 
in  part.  Both  Marx  and  Ruskin  were,  however,  really 
defining  as  value  or  wages  the  cost  of  production.  The 
only  relation  of  labor  to  value  is  as  a  check  upon  wasteful 
production.  If  a  man  finds  that  it  costs  him  more  in 
material  and  labor  to  produce  a  given  article  than  he 
can  get  for  it  in  the  open  market,  he  ceases  making  that 
article  and  turns  his  labor  into  some  more  remunerative 
channel.  Thus  labor  acts  as  a  brake  or  regulator  on  the 
machinery  of  production,  and  in  the  long  run  equalizes 
inequalities,  but  it  does  not  determine  the  value  of  any 
product  or  have  any  direct  influence  on  such  determina- 
tion. 

To  go  back  to  the  beginning  of  Marx's  theory,  he  was 
right  in  saying  that,  since  we  equate  various  articles  and 
pronounce  them  identical  in  value,  there  must  be  some 

^  "Unto  This  Last,"  Essay  III,  Qui  jiidicatis  ieiram. 


MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  123 

common  denominator  of  commodities.  But  he  was 
wrong  in  saying  that  this  common  element  can  be  nothing 
else  than  labor  —  it  can  be  something  else,  because  it 
demonstrably  is  something  else.  The  fact  that  all  com- 
modities have  been  produced  by  labor  has  no  more  social 
significance  than  the  fact  that  they  are  all  composed  of 
matter.  The  one  element  of  social  significance  common 
to  all  commodities  is  that  all  are  capable,  in  varying 
degrees,  of  gratifying  some  desire  of  man  —  or,  in  eco- 
nomic phrase,  they  possess  utility.  In  this  variation  of 
capacity  to  satisfy  desire,  combined  with  the  difficulty 
of  attainment,  we  have  the  whole  explanation  and  the  sole 
explanation  of  differences  in  value.  A  thing  is  worth  what- 
ever somebody  else  will  give  in  exchange  for  it  —  no  less, 
no  more.     In  other  words,  value  is  exchangeability. 

The  ideas  connoted  by  "labor"  and  "value"  are  in- 
commensurable, and  they  can  never  be  equated. 
"Labor"  is  something  positive,  definite,  stable ;  "value" 
is  relative,  variable,  and  always  varying.  Labor  no  more 
produces  the  value  of  a  pound  of  sugar  than  it  produces 
its  sweetness ;  labor  can  as  easily  produce  the  brilliance 
of  the  diamond  as  its  value.  No  theory  of  value  could 
more  uniformly  and  more  violently  contradict  every  fact 
of  experience,  every  principle  that  governs  the  ordinary 
transactions  of  business,  the  daily  buying  and  selling  that 
is  so  intimate  a  part  of  our  lives,  than  does  this  theory 
of  Marx  that  commodities  derive  their  value  from  the 
labor  required  to  produce  them. 

IV 

Before  we  consider  Marx's  theory  of  surplus-value,  it 
is  necessary  to  inquire  more  particularly  just  what  mean- 


124  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

ing  he  attaches  to  the  term  ''labor."  This  is  necessary, 
because  it  has  been  often  charged  against  him  that  he 
recognizes  only  manual  labor,  and  this  would,  of  course, 
be  a  fatal  defect  in  his  "scientific"  socialism.  For  only 
the  simplest  forms  of  manual  labor  are  possible  without 
mental  effort  —  a  fact  that  is  universally  recognized  in 
the  distinction  between  skilled  and  unskilled  labor,  for 
"skill"  is  something  more  than  mere  manual  dexterity. 
The  man  who  shovels  dirt  into  a  cart  needs  and  uses  little 
more  mind  than  the  horse  that  draws  it,  but  the  machin- 
ist at  his  lathe  must  have  and  use  a  high  quality  of  men- 
tal power.  The  factory  organization  tends,  it  is  true, 
to  minimize  all  effort  of  mind,  and  to  reduce  all  workers 
to  the  level  of  machines,  but  somewhere  in  the  process 
of  making  every  article  mental  power  is  urgently  re- 
quired.^ 

Marx  seems  to  recognize  this  fact,  when  he  says,  "By 
labor-power  or  capacity  for  labor  is  to  be  understood  the 
aggregate  of  those  mental  and  physical  capabilities  exist- 
ing in  a  human  being,  which  he  exercises  whenever  he 
produces  a  use-value  of  any  description."  -  A  few  pages 
further  on  he  says  again  :  "Labor  is,  in  the  first  place,  a 
process  in  which  both  man  and  nature  participate,  and 
in  which  man  of  his  own  accord  starts,  regulates,  and 
controls  the  material  reactions  between  himself  and  na- 
ture.    He  opposes  himself  to  nature  as  one  of  her  own 

^  Evolution  is  pushing  the  capitalist  out  of  industry ;  many  of  the 
large  concerns  are  managed  by  paid  presidents  and  superintendents;  in 
time  all  will  be  so  managed.  The  capitalist  more  and  more  becomes  a 
promoter  and  manipulator  of  securities.  He  has  so  organized  industry 
that  he  is  on  the  point  of  organizing  himself  out  of  it  and  becoining  a  mere 
owner. 

2  "Capital,"  p.  145. 


MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  125 

forces,  setting  in  motion  arms  and  legs,  head  and  hands, 
the  natural  forces  of  his  body,  in  order  to  appropriate 
nature's  productions  in  a  form  adapted  to  his  own 
wants."  ^ 

But  while  he  thus  makes  a  formal  recognition  of  men- 
tal labor,  throughout  his  discussions  Marx  practically 
ignores  it.  The  above  extracts  are  his  only  explicit 
declarations  on  the  subject,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  these 
mean  anything  else  than  the  necessary  mental  effort  that 
accompanies  manual  labor.  Pure  mental  labor  receives 
from  him  not  even  formal  recognition.  The  services  of 
superintendence,  the  designing  of  machinery  and  build- 
ings, the  creative  activity  of  invention  —  all  such  mental 
labor  is  unrecognized  in  his  whole  treatise,  appears  to  be 
excluded  from  his  arguments,  and  would  apparently 
find  no  reward  in  a  social  state  organized  according  to 
his  ideal.  It  does  not  seem  an  exaggeration,  therefore, 
of  the  practical  effect  of  his  teaching  to  represent  Marx 
as  holding  that  wealth  is  produced  by  manual  labor  alone, 
and  therefore  of  right  belongs  entirely  to  the  manual 
worker. 

Here  again  the  system  of  Marx  is  based  on  theoretic 
deductions,  rather  than  on  an  induction  of  facts,  contra- 
dicts universal  human  experience,  and  is  fundamentally 
defective.  The  chief  element  in  the  creation  of  value  is 
not  manual  labor,  but  intelligence  or  mental  labor.  La- 
bor undirected  by  intelligence  is  of  little  worth  —  that  is 
why  skilled  labor  is  paid  more  than  unskilled,  and  that 
is  why  the  director  of  work,  who  performs  mental  labor 
only,  is  the  most  highly  paid  of  all.  Recent  socialists, 
like  Mr.  Spargo,  have  been  compelled  to  abandon  Marx 

'  "Capital,"  pp.  156,  157. 


126  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

at  this  point  (protesting,  however,  that  their  master  has 
been  misinterpreted)  and  teach  explicitly  that  labor  must 
be  held  to  include  all  productive  energies,  whether  men- 
tal or  physical.^  They  recognize  the  truth,  v/liich  cannot 
be  denied  without  disaster,  that  the  man  who  designs  a 
locomotive  is  a  laborer  equally  with  the  men  who  build 
it;  the  man  who  organizes  and  directs  a  business  is  a 
laborer  no  less  than  the  man  who  works  at  lathe  or  loom. 
They  even  go  further  and  admit  that  this  is  the  higher 
form  of  labor,  requires  the  rarer  gifts  and  training,  and  is 
the  more  important  factor  in  the  production  of  wealth. 
In  this,  the  later  Socialism  is  distinctly  more  scientific 
than  that  of  Marx. 

We  are  now  ready  to  consider  the  theory  of  surplus- 
value  {Mehrwerth),  the  capstone  of  Marx's  "scientific  " 
Sociahsm.  Under  the  present  capitalistic  system,  in- 
stead of  individuals  working  separately  we  have  men 
employed  by  a  capitalist,  who  buys  their  labor-time  or 
labor-power  like  any  other  commodity,  paying  for  it  its 
exchange- value  or  market  price.^  But  labor-power  differs 
from  other  commodities  in  creating  new  values  in  the 
process  of  being  used  up.  The  laborer  is  paid  his  wages, 
the  price  of  which  is  fixed  by  the  law  of  supply  and  de- 
mand at  an  amount  that  will  maintain  the  worker  and 
his  family  in  a  state  of  efficiency.  But  his  labor  produces 
more  value  than  these  wages  represent,  so  that  while  the 
capitalist  pays  for  the  labor-power  its  exchange-value, 

1  Spargo,  "Socialism,"  pp.  226-228. 

2  Economists  generally  speak  of  labor  as  a  "commodity."  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  "labor"  —  the  working-man  sells  to  his 
employer  his  own  body  and  soul  for  a  given  time,  an  inseparable  part  of 
himself.  It  is  this  vital  human  element  that  must  be  reckoned  with,  and 
this  constitutes  the  diEEerence  between  the  different  grades  of  "labor." 


MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  127 

he  obtains  for  himself  its  use-value.  Suppose  that  the 
laborer  requires  for  his  daily  support  a  certain  quantity 
of  goods  that  we  may  represent  by  A,  and  can  produce 
this  value  in  six  hours.  The  employer  has  bought  his 
entire  labor-power  and  can  require  him  to  work  six  hours 
more,  making  his  product  for  the  day  A+b.  This  b 
is  surplus-value,  which  the  capitalist  acquires  at  the 
laborer's  expense  and  appropriates  to  himself.  This  the 
capitalist  is  able  to  do  because  he  possesses  the  means  of 
production  —  tools  and  raw  materials,  which  he  has  ac- 
quired through  his  money-capital.  The  laborer  would 
be  glad  to  work  for  himself,  without  dependence  on  the 
capitalist,  but  he  has  neither  money  to  buy  materials  nor 
machinery  to  turn  out  product.  He  must  accept  the 
capitalist's  offer  of  employment  and  wages,  or  starve. 
The  capitalist  linds  for  him  the  market  for  his  commodity, 
labor-power,  for  which  he  pays  its  value  in  exchange, 
pocketing  the  difference. 

This  transaction,  Marx  maintains,  is  onl}^  a  legalized 
form  of  robbery.^  Society  ought  to  be  so  organized  that 
the  whole  of  a  man's  labor,  and  not  a  part  merely,  should 
inure  to  his  own  advantage.  There  ought  to  be  no  cap- 
italist employer  to  take  from  the  poor  man  half  of  his 
earnings,  without  rendering  to  the  poor  man  anything  in 
return,  save  that  which  is  already  his  own  inalienable  right 
as  a  man,  the  right  to  earn  his  living  by  his  own  labor. 
Therefore,  the  ideal  at  which  society  should  aim  is  co- 
operative production,  and  cooperative  production  on  a 
universal  scale  is  the  essence  of  Socialism  —  from  which 

'  "Capital  is  dead  labor  that,  vampire-like,  only  lives  by  sucking  livinp 
labor,  and  lives  the  more,  the  more  labor  it  sucks."  —  Das  Kapilal, 
Vol.  I,  Chap.  X. 


128  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

equitable  distribution  is  a  corollary.  Capital,  now  in 
individual  hands,  owes  its  existence  to  society  as  a  whole, 
and  should  rightfully  belong  to  society  as  a  whole. 
Owned  in  common,  it  would  be  administered  for  the 
common  good.  Labor  would  then  be  paid  its  use- 
value  and  not  its  exchange-value.  The  full  product 
of  labor  would  be  divided  among  the  laborers  them- 
selves, and  there  would  be  no  favored  class  to  seize 
the  lion's  share  of  wealth  towards  the  production  of 
which  it  had  contributed  nothing. 

What  Marx  calls  "  surplus- value  "  is  evidently  precisely 
what  other  economists  call  profit.  Marx  has  used  a 
great  number  of  pages  to  describe  in  wearisome  detail 
the  capitalistic  method  of  creating  and  appropriating 
surplus-value,  and  the  whole  pretentious  discourse,  with 
its  philosophical  jargon  and  mathematical  formulas, 
reduces  itself  to  the  simple  proposition  that  every  cap- 
italist expects  to  sell  his  goods  for  more  than  the  cost  of 
production  and  so  make  a  profit.  But  what  sane  man 
ever  dreamed  of  questioning  this  ?  Why  all  this  pother 
to  prove  that  men  do  not  engage  in  business  for  the  mere 
benefit  of  their  health  ?  It  would  have  been  simpler, 
and  honester  too,  to  say  that  the  laborer  has  a  moral 
right  to  the  entire  product  of  his  labor  and  that  profit 
is  ethically  wrong.^  Profit  makes  possible  the  exploita- 
tion of  labor;    Socialism  proposes  to  abolish  profit. 

But  here  are  two  separate  propositions,  and  a  motion 

^  The  right  to  the  whole  product  of  labor,  first  clearly  asserted  by 
Rodbertus,  is  individualistic  anarchism,  not  pure  Socialism.  It  was 
modified  in  the  Gotha  programme  (1875),  into  the  assertion  that  the  whole 
product  of  labor,  being  possible  only  through  society,  belongs  to  society; 
and  its  ultimate  distribution  is  determined,  not  by  the  ethical  right  of 
the  producer,  but  by  the  claims  of  society. 


MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  129 

to  divide  the  question  is  in  order.  That  the  laborer  has 
a  right  to  the  entire  product  of  his  labor  is  an  ethical  prin- 
ciple so  evidently  correct  that  nobody  is  likely  to  dispute 
it  as  an  abstraction ;  but,  as  Captain  Cuttle  says,  "The 
bearings  of  this  observation  lays  in  the  application  on  it." 
Is  all  oi  A  -h  b  the  production  of  the  laborer  ?  Are  there 
not  other  factors  contained  in  this  product  besides  the 
labor-power  of  the  worker  ?  There  is,  first  of  all,  as  we 
have  had  occasion  to  note  before,  the  gift  of  nature  :  the 
raw  materials,  plus  whatever  labor  has  been  necessary  to 
bring  them  to  the  factory  and  make  them  available. 
The  working-man  did  not  acquire  these ;  why  should  he 
be  paid  for  them?  The  "surplus- value"  in  a  suit  of 
clothes  —  i.e.  their  value  over  and  above  what  has  been 
paid  for  labor  all  the  way  up  from  the  birth  of  the  lamb 
to  the  sale  of  the  suit  — ■  does  not  consist  chiefly  in  un- 
paid labor.  By  far  the  largest  part  of  this  value  consists 
in  the  fact  that  wool  is  the  one  material  that  satisfies  a 
general  want  of  mankind  —  the  universal  conviction  that 
"all  wool"  clothing  is  the  best  of  all.  An  analysis  of 
the  process  of  bringing  this  suit  of  clothes  to  the  wearer 
will  show  that  capitalist  and  laborer  have  united  to  ex- 
ploit nature,  and  have  shared  in  the  result  in  certain 
agreed  proportions.  The  equity  of  the  respective  shares 
is  open  to  question,  but  it  cannot  be  maintained  that  all 
of  b  belongs  to  the  laborer,  for  he  did  not  produce  all. 

If  this  be  admitted,  and  the  contribution  of  nature  be 
subtracted  from  b,  there  remains  the  further  factor  of  the 
"plant."  It  is  absurd  to  say  that  a  man  who  stands  over 
a  machine  and  feeds  raw  material  into  it  should  be  cred- 
ited with  the  full  value  of  the  finished  product,  less  the 
raw  material.     On  the  contrary,  the  machine  has  done 


130  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

most  of  the  work  and  therefore  has  contributed  most  of 
the  value.     Another  subtraction  must  be  made. 

There  remains  still  the  factor  of  superintendence  or 
direction,  for  which  Marx  appears  to  make  no  provision 
whatever,  but  which  is  nevertheless  the  vital  factor  in  the 
production  of  value.  Here  is  a  common  business  phe- 
nomenon :  Two  factories  or  shops  are  located  side  by- 
side,  making  the  same  commodities,  say  shoes.  They 
pay  the  same  wages  precisely  to  employees.  One  barely 
keeps  going ;  the  proprietor  of  the  other  gets  rich.  How 
has  the  latter  robbed  his  laborers?  He  has  made  his 
profit  by  superior  intelligence,  buying  better  or  cheaper 
raw  materials,  using  superior  machinery,  having  a  better 
manager,  or  marketing  his  product  with  greater  skill. 
On  the  Marxian  theory,  neither  could  be  more  nor  less  a 
robber  than  the  other,  since  both  pay  the  same  market 
price  (exchange-value)  for  labor-power  and  both  presum- 
ably have  in  return  the  same  use-value.  Yet  the  h  is  very 
different  in  the  one  case  from  the  other,  and  the  cause  of 
the  difference  can  be  nothing  else  than  mental  labor  in 
the  direction  of  the  business.  The  quantitative  value  of 
h  depends  less  on  the  laborer  than  on  the  skill,  foresight, 
and  energy  of  the  director.  If  he  is  lacking  in  these  qual- 
ities, part  or  all  of  h  disappears,  and  the  result  is  bank- 
ruptcy. 

Not  only  is  this  the  most  important  factor  in  present 
industrial  enterprises,  but  it  will  be  equally  important  in 
a  system  of  Socialism.  If  men  are  to  get  their  full  return 
for  labor  in  cooperative  production,  there  must  be  skilled 
direction,  and  this  direction  must  be  paid  for  in  some  way. 
Now  the  capitalist  pays  himself,  and  it  is  of  course  a  fair 
question  for  inquiry  whether  he  does  not  overpay  himself  — ■ 


MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  131 

whether  the  present  system  does  not  pay  too  great  wages 
for  superintendence.  But  that  is  a  very  different  propo- 
sition from  that  of  Marx  —  as  much  different,  to  put  the 
matter  in  the  plainest  words,  as  the  ethical  margin  be- 
tween saying  that  every  capitahst  is  a  robber,  and  say- 
ing that  the  products  of  industry  might  be  more  equi- 
tably divided  than  they  are  at  present.^ 

That  the  laborer  should  have  the  entire  product  of  his 
labor  is.  as  we  have  conceded,  a  proposition  ethically 
unimpeachable,  but  it  is  valid  only  in  abstract  ethics. 
It  is  a  principle  that  will  be  practically  unworkable  in 
any  society.  Even  in  the  socialized  State  to  which  the 
followers  of  Marx  look  hopefully  forward,  this  can  never 
be  more  than  an  ideal.  The  laborer  can  never  hope  to 
receive  the  whole  of  b.  In  a  socialized  State  there  will 
perhaps  be  no  taxes,  but  there  must  be  an  equivalent : 
some  means  by  which  a  fixed  portion  of  the  common 
product  shall  be  reserved  for  the  common  profit  and  the 
common  expenses.  There  must  be  another  reservation 
for  renewal  of  plant  and  extending  enterprises  for  the 
common  good.  Society  itself  will  always  insist,  and 
rightly  insist,  on  having  a  share  of  that  product  which 
only  society  makes  it  possible  for  the  laborer  to  produce. 
That  is  the  inevitable  penalty  of  living  in  a  society.     Only 

^  Marx  is  fond  of  illustrating  his  propositions  by  mathematics,  which 
makes  appropriate  a  proof  of  the  mathematical  absurdity  of  his  theory 
of  capitalistic  robbery.  X  has  a  capital  of  Sio,ooo,  and  engages  in  mak- 
ing tinware,  in  which  he  employs  ten  men  ten  hours  a  day.  He  sells  at 
a  small  advance,  and  at  the  end  of  a  year  has  a  profit  of  $500.  According 
to  Marx  he  has  "  robbed"  each  tinner  of  $50.  Y  has  a  capital  of  $100,000, 
engages  in  manufacturing  jewellery,  also  employing  ten  men  eight  hours  a 
day.  He  sells  at  a  large  advance,  and  at  the  end  of  a  year  has  a  profit  of 
$5000.  According  to  Marx  he  has  "robbed"  his  ten  workers  of  $500 
each ! 


132  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

in  a  state  of  barbarism,  or  by  living  as  a  hermit,  can  a 
man  have  absolutely  the  whole  product  of  his  labor.  It 
becomes  then  merely  a  question  whether  society  will  take 
from  b  more  or  less  than  the  capitalist  now  gets  as  net 
profit,  and  how  much  will  therefore  be  left  for  the  la- 
borer to  enjoy.  At  present  a  good  share  of  b  goes  to 
pay  interest  on  capital  and  for  rent,  but  Socialism  will 
abolish  these  payments,  and  theoretically  the  laborer 
should  get  the  benefit  of  this  economy.  Whether  he 
would  actually  get  it,  nobody  knows  —  it  can  be  deter- 
mined only  by  experiment. 

Moreover,  it  is  plain  that  the  formula  A  -\-  b  represents 
only  the  labor-cost  of  production,  which  in  a  socialized 
State  would  be  the  total  cost.  But  even  in  a  socialized 
State  this  cost  of  production  would  not  decide  the  value 
of  commodities  —  that  would  still  depend  on  the  fitness 
of  the  commodities  to  satisfy  human  wants.  If  production 
should  be  badly  directed  in  a  socialized  State,  the  result 
might  be  the  manufacture  of  articles  that  could  not  even 
be  given  away,  because  nobody  would  want  them. 

Under  the  present  system  the  laborer  is  really  "ex- 
ploited" or  "robbed"  only  in  those  cases  in  which  the 
capitalist  succeeds  in  getting  an  undue  share  for  his  ser- 
vices, or  as  rent  or  interest  on  capital.  Many  manufac- 
turing concerns,  in  these  days  when  merciless  competi- 
tion still  widely  prevails,  are  run  on  a  very  small  margin 
of  profit,  and  sometimes  for  periods  of  months  at  an  actual 
loss.  The  vast  majority  of  corporations  pay  small  divi- 
dends or  none.  Great  fortunes  have,  as  a  rule,  been  made 
by  some  other  means  than  direct  exploitation  of  the  work- 
ing-man— means  that  much  more  closely  resemble  high- 
way robbery  and  swindling.     It  is  this  general  experience 


MODERN  "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  133 

of  vanishing  profits  that  has  encouraged  the  rapid  growth 
of  the  Trust  in  the  last  few  decades,  if  it  has  not  actually 
produced  it. 

There  is  no  end  to  the  absurdities  of  the  Marxian  sys- 
tem. Into  many  of  them  he  was  led  by  his  undue  de- 
pendence on  Ricardo  and  Smith.  Ricardo  had  said  that 
profits  decrease  in  proportion  as  wages  increase ;  and 
Marx  accepted  this  without  question  - —  indeed,  it  is  the 
necessary  foundation  of  his  doctrine  of  surplus-value. 
But  it  is  flatly  contradicted  by  the  economic  experience 
of  the  past  century.  If  surplus-value  were  the  sole  or 
chief  source  of  capitalist  profit,  every  rise  of  wages  would 
involve  loss  of  profit.  Yet  it  is  notorious  that,  during 
the  last  fifty  years,  wages  have  steadily  risen  in  Germany, 
in  England,  and  in  the  United  States,  while  in  spite  of 
such  rise  capitalists  have  reaped  enormous  profits  in  all 
three  countries. 

If  unpaid  human  labor  is  the  sole  source  of  capitalistic 
profit,  why  should  capitalists  have  deluded  themselves 
with  the  notion  that  they  increase  their  profits  by  intro- 
ducing more  machinery  and  reducing  the  number  of 
human  laborers  ?  They  ought  rather  to  employ  twice 
the  number  of  men  and  so  double  their  profits  !  Only 
one  who  carefull}''  shut  himself  away  from  the  world  of 
fact,  and  employed  deduction  to  the  exclusion  of  induc- 
tion, could  elaborate  a  theory  so  at  variance  with  eco- 
nomic experience.  Marx,  in  fact,  abandoned  his  whole 
theory  and  made  waste  paper  of  his  treatise  when  he 
wrote :  "The  profits  of  an  undertaking  are  independent 
of  the  quantity  of  capital  employed  in  it  and  are  not  in 
proportion  to  the  quantity  of  unpaid  labor,"  ^  —  that 

'  Das  Kapital,  Vol.  Ill,  Chap.  VII  (Appendix). 


134  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

is,  profit  is  dependent  on  skill  of  management.     "Scien- 
tific" Socialism,  forsooth! 


Marx  failed  in  his  analysis  of  economic  conditions,  in 
part  because  he  was  at  heart  an  agitator  rather  than  a 
man  of  science.  He  was  essentially  a  revolutionary,  full 
of  gall  and  bitterness  against  men  of  wealth.  But  his 
deepest  source  of  failure  was  that  he  had  been  trained 
as  a  philosopher  and  not  as  a  man  of  affairs,  and  had  not 
the  practical  experience  of  life  that  is  essential  in  an  econo- 
mist. It  is  a  venerable  story  —  and  it  would  be  an  affront 
to  the  intelligence  of  one's  readers  to  repeat  it  —  that 
relates  how  the  German  evolved  the  camel  from  his  inner 
consciousness.  That  is  exactly  the  history  of  Marx's 
"scientific  Sociahsm."  He  made  no  inductive  study  of 
social  facts.  He  had  no  equipment  of  training  in  busi- 
ness, no  life  as  a  proletarian  to  supply,  in  some  sort  at 
least,  the  material  of  fact  that  he  needed.  He  employed 
the  same  old  deductive  m^ethods,  and  first  of  all  set  him- 
self the  task  of  making  definitions,  without  due  study  of 
the  things  to  be  defined.  To  deduce  an  entire  system 
from  a  few  definitions  was  an  easy  task  for  one  trained 
in  logic.      He  did  it. 

Even  his  defective  definitions  would  not  have  led  to 
results  so  erroneous,  had  not  Marx  fixed  his  eyes  so  ex- 
clusively on  a  single  class  of  social  facts,  that  branch  of 
industrialism  concerned  chiefly  with  factories  and  ma- 
chinery. Land  and  the  workers  of  the  land  are  wholly 
left  out  of  his  calculations.  This  is  a  fatal  defect  of  his 
socialistic  scheme,  for  the  agrarian  problem  is  quite  as 
serious  as  the  industrial,  and  much  the  older  of  the  two. 


MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  135 

The  supply  of  food  is  the  one  matter  that  cannot  be  neg- 
lected in  any  scheme  for  the  future  of  society,  but  it  has 
no  place  in  the  system  of  Marx.  The  agrarian  problem 
is  also  a  problem  of  capitalism,  since  capitalists  are  rapidly 
acquiring  possession,  not  only  of  all  tools,  but  of  the 
land,  the  ultimate  source  not  only  of  food  but  of  all  other 
forms  of  wealth.  By  this  possession  of  the  soil,  modern 
Capitalism  is  becoming  rapidly  transformed  into  a  new 
feudahsm,  as  much  more  powerful  than  the  old  as  it  is 
more  wealthy. 

This  evil  and  its  social  results  were  clearly  seen  by  Henry 
George,  and  he  proposed  as  an  adequate  remedy  the  single 
tax  on  land,  all  revenues  of  government  to  be  raised  by 
progressive  taxation  of  land  values  until  the  full  rental 
value  was  reached.  By  thus  making  land  valueless,  save 
for  actual  occupation  and  use,  Mr.  George  maintained  that 
the  State  would  make  access  to  the  land  equally  free  to 
all,  and  the  monopoly  of  productive  machinery  would  be- 
come impossible  —  the  man  who  was  unable  to  find  prof- 
itable industrial  employment  could  always  turn  to  the 
soil  and  make  a  living.  This  would  doubtless  remain  true 
until  the  occupation  of  all  soil  that  could  be  profitably 
worked,  and  then  all  the  present  difficulties  would  reas- 
sert themselves.  The  socialist  is  right  in  objecting  to  the 
single  tax,  that  it  is  only  a  palliative,  not  a  solution. 

The  system  of  Marx,  based  on  the  old  scholastic  method, 
is  as  unsubstantial  as  moonshine.  The  real  basis  of 
Socialism  is  not  scientific,  but  ethical.  It  outrages  men's 
sense  of  justice  that  the  division  of  the  product  of  labor 
should  be  so  unequal  as  it  now  is.  Every  man  with  a 
healthy  moral  sense  is  conscious  that  there  is  something 
wrong  in  a  social  system  that  permits  the  iniquities  to 


136  SOCIALISM  AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

which  he  cannot  shut  his  eyes  if  he  would,  though  he  may 
hesitate  much  when  asked  to  say  just  where  the  wrong 
is,  and  is  likely  to  hesitate  still  more  when  asked  to  pro- 
pose a  remedy.  When  Socialism  appeals  to  that  latent 
feeling,  its  appeal  is  irresistible,  provided  it  does  not 
violate  other  ethical  ideas  in  making  it.  The  only  effec- 
tive argument  for  Socialism  drawn  from  economics  alone 
is  made  by  pointing  out  the  unnecessary  and  gross  waste- 
fulness of  the  present  system,  especially  in  distribution, 
and  by  showing  how  this  waste  could  be  eliminated  by 
the  socialization  of  both  the  production  and  the  distribu- 
tion of  wealth. 

But  while  Marx's  theory  of  value,  and  the  deductions 
from  it,  which  occupy  the  whole  of  his  first  volume  on 
"Capital,"  must  be  pronounced  thoroughly  unscientific 
and  misleading,  his  analysis  of  capitalistic  production 
in  the  second  volume  is  of  high  value.  He  explains  clearly 
the  nature  of  over-production,  the  periodicity  of  com- 
mercial crises  and  panics,  and  makes  it  plain  that  these 
arise  from  a  superabundance  of  wealth  badly  distributed. 
He  was  the  first  economist  to  detect  and  appreciate  the 
drift  towards  socialized  production ;  and  he  predicted 
twenty-five  years  ago,  with  astonishing  accuracy,  the 
line  along  which  further  development  would  take  place. 
Many  things  that  have  since  occurred  he  clearly  fore- 
saw, especially  the  present  era  of  the  Trusts,  or  the  con- 
solidation of  capital  and  the  consequent  socialization  of 
production  on  a  large  scale.  This  prophetic  vision  con- 
stitutes the  real  claim  of  Marx  to  eminence  in  economic 
science;  and  the  justification  of  his  predictions  by  the 
event  has  given  him  a  very  high  repute  and  imparted  to 
Socialism  the  greatest  impetus  it  has  ever  received,  es- 
pecially in  England  and  America. 


MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  137 

Next  to  this,  perhaps  his  service  was  greatest  in  sub- 
stituting evolution  for  revolution  as  the  ideal  of  social- 
ists, a  peaceful  and  irresistible  development  of  forces  and 
institutions  already  working  under  our  eyes,  rather  than 
a  violent  overturning  of  existing  institutions  and  the  im- 
mediate establishment  of  a  new  social  order  on  the  ruins 
of  the  old.  For  this  change  in  the  spirit  and  aims  of 
socialists  we  have  to  thank  Karl  Marx  more  than  any 
of  their  leaders. 

But  he  must  at  the  same  time  be  held  responsible  for 
a  good  deal  of  the  bitterness  of  class-feeling  that  prevails 
among  socialists,  especially  such  as  belong  to  the  class 
of  manual  laborers.  He  chose  deliberately  to  excite  and 
deepen  this  class-feeling,  in  order  to  gain  followers  and 
promote  the  agitation  necessary  to  get  a  hearing  and  in- 
sure the  acceptance  of  socialistic  principles.  He  was 
led  to  this  policy  by  his  study  of  history,  in  which  he 
found  class-struggles  to  be  so  continuous  a  method  of  prog- 
ress ;  and  he  became  convinced  that  future  progress  is 
to  be  reached  only  in  this  way.  The  cultivation  of  class- 
consciousness,  and  the  class-struggle  of  the  proletariat, 
seemed  to  him  the  sole  path  by  which  social  advance  was 
to  be  hoped. ^      All  measures  of  social  amelioration  he 

*  In  any  event  it  may  be  questioned  if  Marx's  method  is  a  fortunate 
one.  If  one  wished  to  induce  a  friend  to  taste  strawberries  for  the  first 
time,  one  would  not  sprinkle  quinine  over  them  —  the  experience  of  gen- 
erations is  that  sugar  will  make  them  much  more  attractive.  Which  is  a 
parable.  Class-feeling  has  probably  prejudiced  more  people  against 
Socialism  and  prevented  them  from  giving  its  claims  fair  consideration, 
than  it  has  ever  drawn  to  its  ranks.  It  is  because  a  new  group  of  social- 
istic writers  and  speakers  have  risen  within  the  last  two  decades,  who 
appeal  to  reason  and  not  to  passion,  to  love  and  not  to  hate,  that  Social- 
ism is  just  beginning  to  get  a  serious  hearing.  For  none  of  this  can  Marx 
be  thanked. 


138  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

regarded  as  mere  tubs  to  the  whale  —  they  were  an  evil, 
because  they  diverted  attention  from  the  true  method  of 
progress  and  were  of  the  nature  of  a  bribe.  Some  of  his 
followers  have  pushed  the  doctrine  of  the  class-struggle 
to  such  an  excess  that  they  would  restrict  the  socialistic 
movement  to  wage-earners ;  but  others  are  wise  enough 
to  see  that  if  it  is  to  succeed,  Socialism  must  win  also  the 
small  farmers  and  shopkeepers,  as  well  as  the  intellectual 
and  moral  elite.  Socialists  often  assert  that,  with  the 
victory  of  their  cause  through  class-consciousness  and  the 
class-struggle,  the  future  will  see  the  entire  disappearance 
of  classes.  What  they  evidently  mean  is,  that  the  pro- 
letariat will  after  its  rise  to  power  absorb  or  extinguish 
other  classes.  The  "disappearance"  will  take  place  a  la 
Jonah.  But  what  guarantee  would  there  be  that 
classes  would  not  speedily  reappear,  also  a  la  Jonah  ? 
Though  Marx  proved  a  true  prophet  in  the  matter  of 
the  Trust,  he  as  conspicuously  failed  in  another  matter 
of  equal  importance :  he  agreed  with  the  Premillenarians 
that  the  world  is  getting  worse,  and  that  it  must  con- 
tinue to  get  worse  before  it  can  get  better.  In  the  in- 
creasing misery  of  the  workers  he  saw  the  sure  sign  of 
impending  social  revolution,  just  as  the  Premillenarians 
see  the  signs  of  the  speedy  coming  of  the  Lord  in  the  grow- 
ing wickedness  of  the  world.  Marx  fared  no  better  and 
no  worse  than  others  who  have  predicted  the  immediate 
end  of  the  age,  —  all  have  in  turn  been  alike  discredited 
by  the  event.  He  beheved  that  the  lot  of  the  wage- 
earner  would  become  so  rapidly  worse  as  to  compel  a 
social  change  in  the  near  future ;  and  if  he  were  still  living, 
he  would  be  a  greatly  disappointed  man,  in  that  the  wage- 
earner's  condition  has  distinctly  improved  and  the  so- 


MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  139 

cial  change  has  been  indefinitely  postponed.  The  new 
heavens  and  the  new  earth  are  not  yet. 

VI 

We  need  not  linger  long  over  the  hotly-debated  ques- 
tion of  the  originality  of  Marx.  There  is  much  truth  in 
Lowell's  lines :  — 

Though  old  the  thought  and  oft  expressed, 
'Tis  his  at  last  who  says  it  best  — 

and  who  may  have  said  it  first  is  of  little  moment. 
Charges  of  unfair  borrowing  of  ideas  have  been  frequent 
among  socialistic  writers.  Marx  charged  that  Lassalle 
ploughed  with  his  heifer ;  Rodbertus,  the  predecessor  of 
both,  complained  freely,  and  at  times  bitterly,  that  the 
best  ideas  in  Marx's  writings  had  been  taken  without 
credit  from  him.  In  both  cases  the  verdict  must  be  that 
the  charge  was  substantially  true ;  and  in  both  cases  it 
must  be  added  that  the  idea  was  bettered  by  the  borrower 
—  just  as  Rodbertus  himself  borrowed  and  used  more 
effectively  ideas  of  Ricardo  and  Mill.  The  fact  seems  to 
be  just  this :  each  economist  took  the  work  of  his  pred- 
ecessor and  carried  it  a  step  farther  —  Ricardo  improved 
on  Smith,  Mill  on  Ricardo,  Rodbertus  on  all  three,  and 
Marx  on  Rodbertus.  Some  were  careful  to  give  credit 
to  their  predecessors;  others  were  less  scrupulous.  If 
any  of  them  need  any  further  defence,  it  may  best  be 
made  in  certain  well-known  lines  of  Mr.  Kipling  :  — 

When  'Omer  smote  'is  bloomin'  lyre 
He'd  'earrl  men  sing  by  land  an'  sea, 

An'  what  'e  thouglit  'c  might  require 
'E  went  an'  took  —  the  same  as  me. 


I40  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

As  matter  of  fact,  the  real  originator  of  Marx's  theory 
of  value  was  Adam  Smith,  in  his  ''Wealth  of  Nations," 
and  much  good  may  the  honor  do  him.  He  said  :  "  What 
everything  really  costs  to  the  man  who  wants  to  acquire 
it,  is  the  toil  and  trouble  of  acquiring  it.  What  every- 
thing is  really  worth  to  the  man  who  has  acquired  it  and 
who  wants  to  dispose  of  it  or  exchange  it  for  something 
else,  is  the  toil  and  labor  which  it  can  save  to  himself,  and 
which  it  can  impose  on  other  people."  The  first  proposi- 
tion is  generally  true ;  the  second  is  only  sometimes  true, 
quite  as  often  untrue,  since  all  depends,  when  a  man 
comes  to  dispose  of  that  which  he  has  acquired,  how 
much  some  other  man  wants  it.  Many  things  enter  into 
the  other  man's  desire  besides  the  amount  of  labor  re- 
quired to  produce  the  article.  Smith  illustrated  his  sec- 
ond proposition  thus:  "If  among  a  nation  of  hunters, 
for  example,  it  usually  costs  twice  as  much  labor  to  kill 
a  beaver  which  it  does  to  kill  a  deer,  one  beaver  would 
naturally  be  worth  or  exchange  for  two  deer."  On  the 
contrary,  as  any  hunter  could  have  told  Mr.  Smith,  if 
the  deer  is  twice  as  useful  for  food  and  clothing  as  the 
beaver,  it  will  be  valued  accordingly,  and  one  deer  will 
exchange  for  two  or  more  beaver.  If,  however,  beaver 
become  very  scarce  and  men  desire  their  fur  greatly,  then 
two  deer  might  be  given  for  one  beaver,  again  irrespec- 
tive of  the  labor  involved  in  capturing  either.  It  is 
what  the  animal  is  worth  in  satisfying  human  wants  after 
the  hunter  has  killed  him  that  determines  his  value,  not 
the  labor  of  the  capture.  Anybody  but  an  economist 
would  have  known  that.^     Utility,  not  embodied  labor, 

1  A  recent  socialist  writer  makes  this  attempt  to  justify  the  Marxian 
theory  of  value :    Primitive  man  makes  a  bow  that  costs  him  a  day's 


MODERN   "SCIENTIFIC"   SOCIALISM  141 

determines  desire;  and  the  proportion  of  supply  to  de- 
mand determines  the  ratio  of  exchanges,  the  world  around, 
and  such  has  been  the  case  since  the  earliest  savages  began 
to  barter.  No  trade  was  ever  made  since  the  world  began 
on  any  other  principles. 

vn 

The  Marxian  system  should  be  called,  not  "scientific" 
Socialism,  but  dogmatic  Socialism,  for  it  has  come  to  have 
in  the  minds  of  his  followers  almost  the  force  of  a  re- 
ligious dogma,  and  is  asserted  by  many  of  them  with  the 
full  force  of  religious  bigotry.  Marx  did  not  take  him- 
self as  seriously  as  his  followers,  and  with  rare  humor 
once  remarked  to  a  friend,  "I  am  not  a  Marxist  m.yself," 

—  Je  ne  siiis  pas  Marxiste,  mot.  At  every  point,  with 
a  single  exception,  as  we  have  discovered  in  our  examina- 
tion, reason  or  experience  or  both  discredit  his  conclusions 

—  the  tooth  of  time  has  eaten  away  every  laurel  leaf  save 
one  from  the  crown  that  his  admirers  placed  on  his  brows. 
His  interpretation  of  history  is  a  system  of  economic  de- 
terminism, Calvinism  without  God.  His  idea  of  the 
inevitableness  of  historical  events,  if  it  were  true,  would 
leave  no  place  for  the  ethical  indignation  that  he  fre- 
quently displays  over  economic  wrong-doing.  His  heart 
frequently  got  the  better  of  his  philosophy,  as  has  been 
the  case  with  many  determinists.  Starting  his  inquiries 
with  the  philosophic  presuppositions  of  the  neo-Hegelian 

work,  and  exchanges  it  for  as  many  arrows  as  could  be  made  in  a  day. 
(Kaufmann,  "  What  is  Socialism  ?  "  p.  35.)  No  barter  was  ever  made  on 
that  principle ;  the  only  question  ever  asked  in  a  trade  is,  What  will  you 
give?  What  will  you  take?  That  is  to  say,  in  the  supposed  case,  how 
much  A  wants  the  arrows  and  how  much  B  wishes  the  bow,  will  decide 
the  terras  of  the  exchange,  not  the  question  of  labor. 


142  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

school,  his  materiaHstic  philosophy  of  wealth-production 
and  wealth-distribution  precluded  him  from  making 
any  but  an  inconsiderable  contribution  to  the  solution  of 
the  social  problem.  That  problem  is  not,  as  he  assumes, 
primarily  a  stomach-question ;  it  is  a  mind-problem,  a 
heart-problem.  Men  are  not  so  constituted  that  they 
will  become  and  remain  happy  when  they  are  merely  fed, 
clothed,  and  warmed,  which  is  all  that  Marx  promises 
them,  all  that  he  seems  to  take  into  consideration. 


V 

ANARCHY:    THE    SCHOOL    OF    PROUDHON    AND 

KROPOTKIN 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Sources :  — 
Proudhon,  What  is  Property?     Boston,  1876. 
Bakounine,  God  and  the  State.     New  York,  1902. 
Kropotkin,  Memoirs  of  a  Revolutionist.     New  York,  1899. 

,  Fields,  Factories,  and  Workshops.     New  York,  1899. 

,  The  Conquest  of  Bread.     New  York,  1907. 

Tolstoi,  My  Confession.     New  York,  1886. 
,  What  To  Do.    New  York,  1889. 

Sympathetic  expositions :  — 
Tucker,  Instead  of  a  Book.     New  York,  1902. 
Eltzbacher,  Anarchism.    New  York,  1908. 


ANARCHY  :     THE   SCHOOL   OF   PROUDHON   AND   KROPOTKIN 


A  STUDY  of  Socialism  necessarily  includes  some  exam- 
ination of  Anarchy,  partly  because  the  two  systems  are 
so  frequently  confounded,  partly  because  they  really  have 
common  elements,  especially  in  the  sphere  of  economics. 
The  origin  of  Anarchy  as  a  distinct  system  is  generally 
ascribed  to  Pierre  Joseph  Proudhon  (1809-1865).  He 
was  a  native  of  Besangon,  and  partially  completed  his 
education  at  the  university  of  that  town,  but  was  com- 
pelled to  seek  means  of  self-support  and  learned  the  com- 
positor's trade.  He  continued  his  studies,  acquired  a 
smattering  of  several  languages,  including  Hebrew,  and 
began  to  compare  them  with  the  French.  In  1838  he 
published  an  Essai  de  Grammaire  Generate,  for  which  the 
Academy  at  Besangon  rewarded  him  with  a  pension. 
It  was  an  ambitious  but  worthless  book,  because  the  as- 
piring author  had  no  adequate  knowledge  of  philology. 
Its  publication  is  a  good  illustration  of  the  intellectual 
restlessness  and  audacity  that  were  Proudhon's  chief 
characteristics. 

In  1839  Proudhon  went  to  Paris,  and  in  the  following 
year  published  his  most  famous  book,  "What  is  Prop- 
erty?" His  answer  to  the  query  appears  on  the  first 
page  of  the  treatise  :  La  Propricte,  c'esl  le  vol,  property  is 
theft ;  and  the  entire  book  is  devoted  to  a  justification 
L  14s 


146  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

of  this  thesis.  Among  the  other  books  of  this  indus- 
trious writer,  which  were  of  value  in  making  known  his 
ideas, are :  "System of  Economic  Contradictions"  (1846), 
''Interest  and  Principal"  (1849),  and  "Justice  in  the 
Revolution  and  the  Church"  (1858).  In  1849  Proudhon 
attempted  to  found  a  "Bank  of  the  People,"  with  the 
purpose  of  abohshing  interest,  and  eventually  capital, 
also.  The  project  came  to  grief  almost  as  speedily  as  his 
critics  predicted.  Later  he  was  imprisoned  three  years 
for  violation  of  the  press  laws  in  connection  with  a  journal 
that  he  had  founded,  called  The  Representative  of  the  Peo- 
ple. On  his  release  he  went  to  Belgium  (1852) ;  here  he 
remained  until  an  amnesty  in  i860  permitted  his  return 
to  Paris,  where  he  lived  and  continued  to  compose  books 
until  his  death. 

Proudhon  set  up  as  a  teacher  of  economics  on  as  slender 
a  capital  as  he  had  when  he  undertook  to  be  a  philologist. 
He  never  worked  out  a  complete  system.  Like  his  pred- 
ecessors in  France,  he  had  a  logical  mind,  which  took 
naturally  to  the  deductive  method,  and  all  his  ideas  are 
inferences  from  a  few  fundamental  principles,  ethical 
rather  than  political  or  economic,  in  which  he  firmly  be- 
lieved. Justice,  liberty,  equality,  were  the  foundations 
of  his  reasoning  regarding  society.  In  an  ideal  society, 
he  held  that  there  would  be  perfect  equality  of  payment 
for  service,  and  this  would  be  just,  because  at  the  same 
time  inequality  of  talent  and  capacity  would  be  reduced 
to  an  inconsiderable  minimum.  The  latter  proposition 
is  exceedingly  dubious ;  it  contradicts  present  experience 
and  reasonable  forecast  of  the  future.  Not  only  are  great 
inequalities  of  talent  and  capacity  now  observed  to  exist, 
but  it  is  only  reasonable  to  suppose  that,  with  perfect 


ANARCHY  147 

liberty  and  the  consequent  opportunity  of  every  one  to 
develop  liimself  to  the  utmost  (which  practically  nobody 
has  now),  the  inequalities  would  become  greater,  not  less. 
It  is  true  thatliberty  and  equality  would  enable  many  to 
rise  who  are  now  ground  down  and  crushed  by  poverty, 
but  that  is  beside  the  point.  Until  some  process  is  found 
for  bringing  men  into  the  world  with  equal  mental  and 
physical  endo'\\Tnents,  there  can  be  reasonably  expected 
no  material  diminution  of  present  inequalities  of  talent 
and  capacity.  Under  liberty  and  equality  we  might 
reasonably  expect  a  vast  increase  of  talent  and  capacity, 
of  all  grades,  and  that  is  all. 

But  to  Proudhon,  justice,  liberty,  and  equality  seemed 
to  demand  that  all  men  share  alike  in  the  returns  of  labor. 
The  appropriation  of  an  undue  share  by  individuals,  the 
right  of  property,  he  compared  to  the  right  of  auhane  in 
French  law,  —  the  sovereign's  claim  to  the  property  of 
a  deceased  foreigner, — a  legal  right  founded  simply  on 
force,  not  on  any  ethical  principle.  Private  property 
has  a  nke  power  of  appropriating  values,  in  the  form  of 
rent  and  interest.  It  reaps  without  labor,  it  consumes 
without  producing,  it  enjoys  without  exertion.  Private 
property  is  therefore  indefensible  on  any  ethical  ground. 
Property  in  the  form  of  land  is  robbery,  because  God 
made  the  earth,  and  his  gifts  are  free ;  the  common  right 
to  the  soil  can  no  more  be  surrendered  or  taken  away 
than  other  fundamental  rights,  like  life  and  liberty. 
That  only  is  one's  own  which  he  actually  produces,  and 
the  right  to  any  portion  of  the  soil  expires  the  moment 
one  ceases  to  cultivate  it.  Thus  far  Socialism  would 
assent  to  the  doctrine  of  Proudhon ;  it  makes  a  clear 
distinction  between  property  in  means  of  production, 


148  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

and  property  in  means  of  consumption.  Private  prop- 
erty in  the  former  is  theft ;  private  property  in  the  latter 
wrongs  no  one  and  may  be  permitted. 

Property  in  the  form  of  capital  is  also  robbery,  Prou- 
dhon  argued,  because  it  enables  one  who  has  produced 
nothing  to  consume  the  fruits  of  others'  toil.  It  thus 
becomes  the  plundering  of  the  weak  by  the  strong.  But 
would  it  be  a  remedy  merely  to  reverse  the  injustice  and 
permit  the  strong  to  be  plundered  by  the  weak?  This 
is  but  to  perpetuate  the  present  slavery,  the  only  differ- 
ence being  that  we  should  have  many  masters  instead 
of  one.  Again,  the  law  of  the  manna  would  be  the  ideal 
law  of  property :  every  man  should  gather  and  keep  what 
his  family  needed  and  no  more ;  to  gather  more  is  to  deny 
the  equal  rights  of  some  other  family.  But  how  to  apply 
this  principle  to  the  conditions  of  modern  society  is  the 
difficulty,  and  at  that  point  Proudhon  offers  no  valuable 
suggestion.  He  merely  maintains  that  possession  is  the 
synthesis  of  the  contradiction :  the  instruments  of  labor 
are  mine  while  I  use  them ;  a  piece  of  land  is  mine  while 
I  cultivate  it.  An  analysis  of  Proudhon's  arguments 
makes  it  clear  that  what  he  is  really  opposing  as  unjust 
is,  the  profits  of  capital :  rent,  and  interest.  His  ideas  of 
economics  reduce  themselves  to  the  demand  for  the  aboli- 
tion of  these,  nothing  more. 

The  practical  means  proposed  by  Proudhon  for  realiz- 
ing his  ideas  was  the  establishment  of  a  great  national 
bank  to  facilitate  exchanges.  This  bank  was  to  issue 
paper-money,  or  labor-checks,  on  all  articles  offered,  on 
the  basis  of  the  labor-time  expended  in  their  production. 
These  checks  would  entitle  the  holder  to  any  other  arti- 
cles of  equal  value ;  that  is,  articles  that  required  the 


ANARCHY  149 

same  labor-time  for  production.  Products  were  to  be 
exchanged  for  products,  the  checks  merely  making  ex- 
changes easier  than  barter.  This  scheme,  with  its  ulti- 
mate reduction  of  interest  to  zero,  and  the  disappearance 
of  rents  and  profits,  he  called  mutualism. 

There  is  a  science  of  society,  thought  Proudhon,  which 
we  have  not  to  invent,  but  to  discover.  He  had  little 
respect  for  what  others  had  claimed  to  discover  concern- 
ing this  science.  "Political  economy,'^  he  said,  "which 
is  regarded  by  many  as  a  philosophy  of  wealth,  is  in  fact 
nothing  but  an  organized  practice  of  robbery  and  mis- 
ery." Hence  he  disagreed  with  his  predecessors,  chiefly 
because  they  believed  it  possible  to  regenerate  society  ac- 
cording to  some  ready-made  programme.  This  notion 
he  called  a  "cursed  lie."  He  had  no  Utopia,  but  believed 
in  the  gradual  evolution  of  society,  in  accordance  with 
its  fundamental  laws,  into  collectivism  and  finally  into 
Anarchy,  a  social  condition  in  which  government  and  law 
would  be  no  longer  necessary.  Such  a  social  condition 
seemed  to  him  a  clear  deduction  from  the  idea  of  liberty, 
and  he  was  right  if  liberty  and  individualism  are  iden- 
tical. Anarchy  is  simply  the  logic  of  laissez  faire  pushed 
to  its  extreme  conclusion.  If  the  best  government  is 
that  which  governs  least,  as  the  Manchester  school  main- 
tained, then  a  still  better  would  be  one  that  did  not  gov- 
ern at  all  —  no  government,  that  is  to  say.  And  if  gov- 
ernment is  simply  organized  injustice,  all  the  more  it 
should  be  abolished.  Said  Adam  Smith  :  "Civil  govern- 
ment, so  far  as  it  is  instituted  for  the  security  of  property, 
is  in  reality  instituted  for  the  defence  of  the  rich  against 
the  poor,  or  of  those  who  have  some  property  against 
those  who  have  none  at  all."     Frank  confession  !    How 


150  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

can  the  poor  be  expected  to  respect  such  law  and  govern- 
ment ?  Why  should  not  their  abolition  be  thought  most 
desirable  ?  It  is  perhaps  not  wonderful  that  Proudhon 
failed  to  perceive  one  imphcation  of  this  doctrine  of 
Anarchy  :  it  is  the  negation  of  all  society ;  perfect  liberty 
of  the  individual  may  be  wholly  desirable,  but  it  is  neces- 
sarily incompatible  with  any  form  of  social  order. 

Proudhon 's  importance  in  the  development  of  Social- 
ism is  that  this  doctrine  of  property  suggested  to  Marx 
his  notion  of  the  nature  of  capital :  it  is  acquired  by  rob- 
bery, by  the  power  of  exploiting  the  worker  through  ap- 
propriation of  the  total  result  of  productive  labor  and 
giving  the  laborer  only  a  partial  equivalent,  the  capitalist 
retaining  the  "  surplus- value  "  for  himself.  He  also  an- 
ticipated the  doctrine  regarding  the  ownership  of  land, 
made  famous  in  more  recent  years  by  Henry  George, 
though  it  is  probable  that  George  had  never  heard  of 
Proudhon's  teaching.  Both  agreed  that  the  right  of  occu- 
pation should  be  substituted  for  ownership  of  land,  the 
ownership  being  vested  in  the  entire  community. 

One  great  and  permanent  effect  seems  to  have  followed 
the  teachings  of  Proudhon,  the  abandonment  of  specific 
programmes,  the  devising  of  ingenious  Utopias.  Stu- 
dents of  social  conditions  became  emancipated  from  the 
enslaving  notion  that  the  millennium  in  five  minutes  is  a 
possibility ;  they  adopted  instead  the  evolutionary  phi- 
losophy as  the  basis  of  their  thinldng.  Doubtless  we 
are  to  ascribe  this  great  and  beneficent  change  chiefly 
to  the  growing  prevalence  of  that  philosophy  in  all  forms 
of  intellectual  activity,  in  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  but  Proudhon  is  at  least  entitled  to  the  credit  of 
blazing  out  the,  new  way. 


ANARCHY  151 

It  is  also  worth  noting,  since  we  shall  presently  see  a 
violent  contrast,  that  Proudhon  wrote  in  a  deeply  re- 
ligious spirit,  if  not  precisely  as  a  Christian.  To  his  first 
memoir  on  property,  he  appended  this  prayer:  "O  God 
of  liberty  !  God  of  equality !  Thou  God  who  didst 
place  in  my  heart  the  sentiment  of  justice  before  my  rea- 
son comprehended  it,  hear  my  prayer.  Thou  hast  dic- 
tated what  I  have  written.  Thou  hast  formed  my 
thought,  thou  hast  directed  my  studies,  thou  hast  sepa- 
rated my  spirit  from  curiosity  and  my  heart  from  attach- 
ment, in  order  that  I  should  publish  the  truth  before  the 
master  and  the  slave.  I  have  spoken  as  thou  hast  given 
me  power  and  talent ;  it  remains  for  thee  to  complete 
my  work.  Thou  knowest  whether  I  have  sought  my 
interest  or  thy  glory.  O  God  of  liberty  !  May  my  mem- 
ory perish,  if  humanity  may  but  be  free  !" 

We  shall  do  well  also  to  note  that  Proudhon  proposed 
Anarchy  as  a  goal,  not  as  an  immediate  possibility.  Gov- 
ernment of  man  by  man,  in  every  form,  can  be  nothing 
else  than  oppression,  he  said,  but  man  can  only  gradually 
come  to  that  perfect  society  which  is  the  union  of  anarchy 
and  order.  This  teaching  his  most  influential  successors 
have  repudiated,  and  in  so  doing  they  have  gone  back 
to  the  old  idea  of  the  immediate  reorganization  of  society. 
Anarchists  are  therefore  still  wandering  in  Utopias  that 
sociahsts  have  abandoned. 

II 

The  first  to  push  still  further  the  idea  of  Anarchy  was 
Michael  Bakunin.  He  was  the  scion  of  an  aristocratic 
family  of  Russia,  born  in  181 4,  and  became  an  officer  in 
the  army.     Sickened  by  the  brutalities  that  he  witnessed 


152  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

in  Poland,  he  resigned  his  commission  and  became  a 
student  of  philosophy  in  Germany,  from  1841  to  1843. 
He  then  went  to  Paris,  the  great  Cave  of  Adullam  for 
revolutionists,  where  he  became  an  active  member  of 
various  sociaKst  and  communist  societies.  Making  the 
acquaintance  of  Proudhon,  he  adopted  the  latter's 
theories  in  part  and  still  further  developed  them.  The 
rest  of  his  life,  after  1847,  he  spent  in  going  about  from 
place  to  place,  being  at  one  time  under  sentence  of  death, 
and  again  an  exile  to  Siberia,  whence  he  succeeded  in 
making  his  escape.  His  last  days  were  spent  in  London 
and  Switzerland,  where  he  died  in  1876.  His  was  a 
stormy  life ;  he  aimed  at  great  things,  but  accompHshed 
little. 

Even  his  principal  work,  "God  and  the  State,"  is  but 
a  fragment.  He  was  a  bald  materialist  in  philosophy, 
hence  an  atheist  in  religion.  Every  form  of  external 
authority,  human  or  divine,  provoked  his  unbounded 
wrath,  his  undying  opposition.  Absolute  Hberty  was 
his  only  god,  a  hberty  hmited  only  by  the  laws  of  nature, 
scientifically  ascertained.  These  man  cannot  but  obey, 
for  they  are  the  laws  also  of  his  own  nature.  Therefore, 
with  knowledge  of  these  laws,  all  need  of  poHtical  organi- 
zation, administration,  legislation,  will  at  once  disappear. 
Of  course,  no  privileged  class  should  exist,  —  nature 
decrees  that  men  should  have  equal  rights  and  oppor- 
tunities. All  religions  are  to  be  abolished,  and  science 
is  to  be  substituted  for  faith.  Marriage  will  also  be  abol- 
ished, and  absolutely  free  unions  will  take  its  place. 

These  are  not  mere  speculations,  but  have  become  an 
avowed  programme.  The  Alliance  de  la  Democratic 
Socialiste,  which  Bakunin  organized  in  1869  at  Geneva, 


ANARCHY  153 

adopted  as  the  first  plank  in  its  platform  :  ''The  Alliance 
declares  itself  atheist ;  it  demands  the  abolition  of  all 
worship,  the  substitution  of  science  for  faith,  of  human 
justice  for  Divine  justice ;  the  abolition  of  marriage,  so 
far  as  it  is  a  poHtical,  reHgious,  juridical,  or  civil  institu- 
tion." From  this  it  clearly  appears  that  liberty  of  con- 
science will  not  be  a  principle  of  the  anarchist  order ;  to 
the  absolute  liberty  of  all  men  which  they  demand,  there 
is  to  be  one  limitation :  no  man  shall  be  at  liberty  to 
have  any  religion.  The  anarchist  has  yet  to  learn  that 
to  be  intolerant  is  to  be  intolerable. 

In  his  economic  ideas  Bakunin  agrees  in  the  main  with 
Marx  and  the  ''scientific"  socialists,  —  capital  is  to  be 
abolished,  the  community  is  to  assume  ownership  of  the 
means  of  production,  and  some  form  of  voluntary  collec- 
tivism is  to  be  established.  The  details  of  the  scheme 
he  did  not  clearly  work  out.  Anarchy  bends  all  its  ener- 
gies at  present  to  the  work  of  destruction  ;  the  first  thing 
is  to  do  away  with  the  present  order;  construction  of 
another  will  come  after  that. 

Some  things,  however,  are  clear.  All  limits  of  race 
and  nationality  are  expected  to  disappear  in  this  univer- 
sal solvent  of  Anarchy.  Patriotism  is  a  crime,  not  a  vir- 
tue. A  universal  federation  of  all  local  associations  will 
come  about  naturally,  and  world-wide  peace  and  order 
will  take  the  place  of  the  present  international  jealousies 
and  warfare.  This  programme,  of  course,  demands  the 
merciless  and  complete  destruction  of  the  existing  social 
organization,  to  the  end  that  men  may  begin  to  live  the 
life  for  which  they  were  designed  by  nature,  without 
government  and  without  law.  Bakunin's  motto  might 
well  have  been,  "Whatever  is,  is  wrong." 


154  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

in 

After  Bakunin,  the  most  influential  anarchist  leader 
has  been  Prince  Peter  Alexeievitch  Kropotkin,  born  at 
Moscow  in  1842,  the  descendant  of  an  ancient  Russian 
family  that  is  said  to  have  better  claim  to  the  throne  of 
Russia  than  the  Romanoffs.  He  was  educated  in  the 
corps  of  pages  at  St.  Petersburg,  and  became  an  officer 
in  a  regiment  of  Cossacks.  He  served  for  some  years  in 
Siberia,  where  he  vainly  tried  to  introduce  reforms  into 
the  convict  prisons.  For  scientific  investigations  in 
Manchuria  he  received  the  gold  medal  of  the  Russian 
Geographical  Society  in  1864.  From  childhood  he  had 
been  familiar  with  the  cruelties  of  private  owners  of  the 
serfs,  and  he  gradually  conceived  an  imperishable  hatred 
of  the  entire  Russian  social  and  political  system.  In 
1874  his  radical  theories  of  social  reform  caused  his 
arrest  and  imprisonment,  but  he  escaped  in  1876  and 
thenceforth  became  a  revolutionary. 

Going  to  Geneva,  Kropotkin  founded  a  journal  called 
Le  Revolte,  but  he  was  expelled  from  Switzerland  in  1881 
at  the  demand  of  Russia.  He  then  went  to  England, 
and  thence  after  a  few  years  to  France,  where  in  1883  he 
was  arrested,  tried,  and  condemned  to  five  years'  im- 
prisonment for  political  conspiracy.  He  had  been  one 
of  the  leaders  of  an  anarchist  propaganda  that  resulted 
in  an  insurrection  at  Montceau-les-Mines,  where  dyna- 
mite was  used  for  the  first  time  as  an  argument  in  social 
agitation.  Released  in  1886,  he  took  up  his  abode  in 
London,  and  has  contented  himself  since  then  with  ad- 
vocacy of  anarchy  through  the  press.  To  his  "Mem- 
ories of  a  Revolutionist"  (1899),  a  portrait  is  prefixed 


ANARCHY  155 

which  shows  an  elderly  gentleman  with  a  big-domed, 
bald  head,  looking  out  benevolently  through  his  spec- 
tacles over  a  patriarchal  beard  —  an  almost  ludicrous 
contrast  to  the  ideal  of  a  wild-eyed,  bloody-minded  an- 
archist that  is  commonly  entertained. 

On  his  trial  at  Lyons,  Prince  Kropotkin  (he  has  re- 
nounced the  title)  gave  a  full  exposition  of  his  anarchis- 
tic views,  which  he  has  since  consistently  set  forth  with 
more  elaboration  in  his  books.  For  the  ordinary  reader 
his  ''Conquest  of  Bread"  (1907)  will  be  found  quite  suffi- 
cient. Like  all  anarchists,  he  demands  absolute  freedom, 
so  far  as  law  and  government  are  concerned,  with  no 
limit  on  the  action  of  man  but  the  impossibilities  of 
nature  and  the  equal  rights  of  his  neighbors.  Instead 
of  legal  and  administrative  control  of  men,  there  should 
be  free  contract,  perpetually  subject  to  revision  and 
cancellation.  Freedom  and  private  capital  are  incom- 
patible. No  man  has  a  right  to  appropriate  anything 
that  is  the  culmination  of  the  toil  of  generations.  "All 
belongs  to  all.  All  things  are  for  all  men,  since  all  men 
have  need  of  them,  since  all  have  worked  in  the  measure 
of  their  strength  to  produce  them,  and  since  it  is  not  pos- 
sible to  evaluate  every  one's  part  in  the  production  of 
the  world's  wealth." 

Kropotkin  calls  his  system  "anarchistic  communism," 
and  says  that  it  is  the  synthesis  of  the  two  ideas  pursued 
by  humanity  throughout  the  ages,  economic  and  political 
liberty.  He  avows  as  his  ideal,  well-being  for  all  —  or, 
as  he  further  explains,  science  for  all,  work  for  all,  bread 
for  all,  justice  for  all.  This,  he  maintains,  is  a  possible, 
a  realizable,  ideal,  and  his  economic  justification  of  the 
theory  is  founded  on  abundant  knowledge  and  is  thor- 


156  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

oughly  convincing.  He  shows  by  elaborate  calculations, 
founded  on  present  production  in  agriculture  and  manu- 
factures, how  the  people  comprised  in  the  city  of  Paris  and 
the  two  adjacent  departments  of  Seine  and  Seine-et-Oise, 
if  they  should  declare  themselves  to  be  an  anarchistic 
commune,  could  supply  themselves  with  every  comfort 
and  luxury  of  life  by  the  productive  labor  of  all,  working 
only  five  hours  a  day. 

But  a  much  simpler  computation  is  sufficient  to  prove 
the  economic  possibility  of  anarchistic  communism.  In 
France  to-day,  as  the  census  shows,  fewer  than  ten  per- 
sons in  thirty  of  the  population  are  actual  producers. 
In  England,  fewer  than  eight  in  twent3^-six  are  producers, 
as  shown  by  the  official  census.  The  average  day's 
work  is  probably  not  over  ten  hours  in  either  country. 
It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  if  all  the  people  became  pro- 
ducers, five  hours'  labor  a  day  of  all  would  result  in  a  vastly 
increased  product  —  to  take  no  account  of  what  might 
be  added  by  intensive  culture  of  the  soil  by  such  an  army 
of  workers,  and  the  improved  quality  of  labor  in  fac- 
tories ;  also  leaving  out  of  account  the  fact  that  the  sav- 
ing of  what  is  now  squandered  every  year  in  harmful 
indulgence  would  nearly  or  quite  double  the  wealth  of  any 
nation.  A  single  fact  will  show  what  can  be  accom- 
plished by  approved  methods  of  agriculture :  in  ten 
years  the  agricultural  products  of  the  United  States  have 
doubled,  and  in  1909  their  value  reached  $9,000,000,- 
000,  or  fully  $100  each  for  every  man,  woman,  and 
child  of  our  population. 

Kropotkin  scouts  the  idea  of  attaining  the  goal  by 
peaceful  evolution ;  his  hope  is  in  a  speedy  revolution, 
with  as  httle  violence  as  may  be,  though  he  evidently 


ANARCHY  157 

expects  not  a  little.  He  has  slight  hope  in  universal 
suffrage  as  a  means  by  which  the  laborer  can  gain  his 
rights,  because  only  one  voter  in  ten  is  in  a  position  to 
cast  a  free  vote.  Hence,  anarchists  all  maintain  and 
proclaim  'Hhe  sacred  right  of  insurrection,"  as  the  last 
appeal  of  men  in  a  state  of  slavery.  Likewise,  Kropotkin 
has  no  faith  in  the  collectivism  preached  by  socialists, 
and  criticises  the  socialistic  schemes  quite  as  severely 
as  he  does  the  existing  society.  Nothing  will  free  the 
laborer  but  a  social  system  that  will  consist  of  free  con- 
tracts between  individuals  and  groups  pursuing  the  same 
aim.^  When  the  Revolution  comes,  and  he  thinks  it  is 
near  at  hand,  the  people  are  to  take  possession  of  every- 
thing, especially  of  food,  and  proceed  to  reorganize  pro- 
duction on  this  new  basis  of  free  contract.  The  principle 
on  which  the  common  product  of  society  ought  equitably 
to  be  divided,  should  be  that  which  now  obtains  about 
many  things,  a  city  water-supply,  for  example :  no  limit 
to  an  individual's  consumption  of  what  the  community 
possesses  in  abundance,  but  an  equal  sharing  of  those 
commodities  that  are  scarce  or  apt  to  run  short.^ 

Political  economy,  as  ordinarily  expounded,  is  merely 
descriptive  of  what  is  in  society,  and  is  only  a  pseudo- 
science.  For  this  Kropotkin  would  substitute  a  real 
science,  which  he  proposes  to  call  the  Physiology  of 
Society.  Instead  of  beginning  with  a  study  of  the  pro- 
duction of  wealth,  as  all  economists  from  Adam  Smith  to 
Karl  Marx  have  done,  and  coming  down  to  its  consump- 
tion, he  would  reverse  the  process.  Let  us  first  study  the 
needs  of  humanity  and  the  means  of  satisfying  them 

*  "Conquest  of  Bread,"  p.  37. 
'  Ibid.  p.  77. 


158  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

with  the  least  possible  waste  of  human  energy,  and  then 
make  a  scientific  adjustment  of  production  to  the  supply- 
ing of  these  needs.  Under  the  present  system  there  is 
frightful  waste,  and  men's  wants  are  still  unsatisfied. 
Kropotkin's  method  would  certainly  give  us  a  new  science 
of  economics,  and  might  give  us  a  new  social  order ;  but 
that  could  not  be  Anarchy.  For  no  adjustment  of  pro- 
duction to  needs  could  be  made  without  careful  calcula- 
tions, and  when  the  adjustment  had  been  made,  there 
must  be  some  means  of  securing  the  proper  production. 
That  would  be  impossible  with  each  man  a  law  to  him- 
self. Kropotkin's  idea  is  as  exactly  adapted  to  Socialism 
as  it  is  chimerical  in  Anarchy. 

IV 

Without  doubt  the  writer  who  has  most  widely  diffused 
ideas  of  Anarchy  has  been  Count  Lyof  N.  Tolstoi.  Born 
in  1828,  partially  educated  at  the  University  of  Moscow, 
he  entered  the  artillery  service  of  the  Russian  army  in 
185 1,  and  served  in  the  siege  of  Sebastopol.  He  left 
the  army  and  married  in  1862,  devoting  himself  thence- 
forth to  the  management  of  his  estates  and  to  literature. 
He  had  already  published  "The  Cossacks,"  and  after  his 
marriage  he  wrote  "War  and  Peace";  by  which  two 
books,  and  some  writings  of  less  note,  he  made  for  himself 
a  high  place  in  Russian  literature.  In  1875  he  began  the 
publication  of  perhaps  his  greatest  work,  "Anna  Kare- 
nina,"  as  a  serial,  and  though  its  progress  was  interrupted 
for  several  months,  the  interest  of  the  public  showed  no 
diminution. 

It  is  in  two  books  of  much  later  date  that  we  find  the 
story  of  Tolstoi's  spiritual  development,  "My  Confes- 


ANARCHY  159 

sion"  and  "My  Religion"  (1886),  which  together  con- 
stitute one  of  the  most  remarkable  human  documents 
in  existence.  He  tells  us  that  he  was  christened  and 
educated  in  the  faith  of  the  Orthodox  Greek  Church ; 
still,  when  he  had  left  the  University,  eighteen  years  old, 
he  had  discarded  all  belief  in  anything  that  he  had  been 
taught.  "I  honestly  desired,"  he  says,  "to  make  myself 
a  good  and  virtuous  man ;  but  I  was  young,  I  had  pas- 
sions, and  I  stood  alone,  altogether  alone,  in  my  search 
after  virtue.  Every  time  I  tried  to  express  the  longings 
of  my  heart  for  a  truly  virtuous  life,  I  was  met  with  con- 
tempt and  derisive  laughter,  but  directly  I  gave  way  to 
the  lowest  of  my  passions,  I  was  praised  and  encouraged. 
I  found  ambition,  love  of  power,  love  of  gain,  lechery, 
pride,  anger,  vengeance,  held  in  high  esteem.  I  gave 
way  to  these  passions,  and  becoming  like  unto  my 
elders,  I  felt  that  the  place  that  I  filled  in  the  world 
satisfied  those  around  me.  My  kind-hearted  aunt,  a 
really  good  woman,  used  to  say  to  me  that  there  was 
one  thing  above  all  others  that  she  wished  for  me  —  an 
intrigue  with  a  married  woman."  The  ethical  quality 
of  high  Russian  society  is  clearly  depicted  for  us  in 
that  single  stroke  of  the  pen. 

Instructions  and  examples  like  these  bore  their  natural 
fruit :  "I  put  men  to  death  in  war,  I  fought  duels  to  slay 
others,  I  lost  at  cards,  wasted  my  substance,  wrung  from 
the  sweat  of  peasants,  punished  the  latter  cruelly,  rioted 
with  loose  women,  and  deceived  men.  Lying,  robbery, 
adultery  of  all  kinds,  drunkenness,  violence  and  murder, 
all  committed  by  me,  not  one  crime  omitted,  and  yet  I 
was  not  the  less  considered  by  my  equals  a  comparatively 
moral  man.     Such  was  my  life  during  ten  years." 


l6o  SOCL\LISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

During  this  period  he  began  to  write,  partly  to  obtain 
fame  and  money,  partly  because  he  imagined  it  was  his 
vocation  to  teach  mankind:  ''I  was  myself  considered 
a  marvellous  litterateur  and  poet,  and  I,  therefore,  very 
naturally  adopted  this  theory.  Meanwhile,  thinker  and 
poet  though  I  was,  I  wrote  and  taught  I  knew  not  what. 
For  doing  this  I  received  large  sums  of  money.  .  .  . 
Moreover,  I  had  fame.  It  would  seem,  then,  that  what 
I  taught  must  have  been  good;  the  faith  in  poetry 
and  the  development  of  life  was  a  true  faith,  and  I  was 
one  of  its  high  priests,  a  post  of  great  importance  and 
profit."  It  was  long  before  he  doubted  the  truth  of  this 
behef,  for,  as  he  tells  us  again  :  "I  was  simple  enough  to 
imagine  that  I,  the  poet  and  thinker,  was  able  to  teach 
other  men  without  myself  knowing  what  it  was  that  I 
attempted  to  teach." 

It  was  not  until  somewhere  about  the  year  1874  that 
he  found  a  strange  state  of  mind-torpor  begin  at  times  to 
grow  upon  him.  He  began  to  wander  and  was  a  victim 
of  low  spirits.  During  these  periods  of  perplexity,  which 
grew  more  and  more  frequent,  the  same  questions  pre- 
sented themselves  to  him.  Why?  and.  What  after? 
At  first  these  questions  seemed  empty  and  unmeaning, 
but  no  sooner  had  he  begun  to  answer  them  than  he 
found  he  was  concerned  with  the  deepest  problems  of  fife, 
and  that  he  was  utterly  unable  to  find  an  answer.  His 
life  had  come  to  a  sudden  stop.  He  was,  indeed,  able 
to  breathe,  to  eat,  to  sleep,  but  there  was  no  real  life  in 
him.  The  horror  of  great  darkness  had  come  upon  him, 
too  great  to  be  borne,  and  he  longed  to  free  himself  by 
suicide. 

For  a  time  he  sought  relief  in  study.     After  a  long  quest 


ANARCHY  l6i 

he  found  that  human  learning  had  no  answer  to  his  ques- 
tions. All  science  was  vain.  His  study  brought  him 
to  no  conclusion,  except  that  life  is  a  very  great  evil,  and 
annihilation  is  a  good  for  which  we  ought  to  wish.  Hav- 
ing failed  to  find  an  explanation  of  life  in  knowledge,  he 
began  to  seek  it  by  observing  the  life  of  men  around  him, 
asking  himself  how  they  lived  and  how  they  practically 
treated  questions  that  brought  him  to  despair.  He  found 
that  he  could  learn  nothing  from  the  hfe  of  the  upper 
classes,  the  rich  and  cultivated,  with  whom  he  had 
formerly  associated ;  but  when  he  came  to  study  the  lives 
and  the  doctrines  of  the  common  people,  he  became  con- 
vinced that  a  true  faith  was  to  be  found  among  them, 
which  alone  gave  a  meaning  to  life,  and  a  possibility  of 
living. 

After  years  of  scepticism,  therefore,  he  turned  once 
more  to  religion,  and  to  the  Church  of  his  fathers.  He 
did  this  in  entire  good  faith,  but  in  the  doctrines  and 
sacraments  of  the  Church  he  found  so  much  that  outraged 
his  reason  that  he  obtained  but  partial  relief.  He  then 
turned  to  the  study  of  the  Scriptures  for  himself,  but  he 
found  difficulty  in  understanding  them,  and  when  he 
sought  help  from  the  writers  of  the  Church,  his  difficulties 
were  increased  rather  than  removed.  Any  diligent  stu- 
dent of  theological  literature  will  respond  to  this  say- 
ing: "It  became  evident  to  me  that  if  the  Gospels  had 
come  down  to  us  half  burned  or  effaced,  it  would  have 
been  easier  to  restore  the  true  meaning  of  the  text  than 
to  find  that  meaning  now,  beneath  the  accumulations 
of  fallacious  comments  which  have  apparently  no  pur- 
pose save  to  conceal  the  doctrine  they  are  supposed  to 
expound." 

M 


l62  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

He  at  last  found  the  key  that  unlocked  all  his  mys- 
teries in  a  single  saying  of  Jesus,  "Resist  not  evil."  This 
he  holds  to  be  the  master  word  of  Jesus,  and  it  made  Tol- 
stoi an  anarchist.  It  will  be  seen,  however,  that  he  is 
an  anarchist  of  quite  different  temper  and  spirit  from 
Bakunin  and  Kropotkin,  and  even  from  Proudhon.  The 
problem  of  life  is  to  him  supremely  ethical,  only  inci- 
dentally economic;  and  he  approaches  it  from  the  re- 
ligious point  of  view,  not  the  political.  His  method  is 
simple  :  a  rigid,  literal  interpretation  of  the  words  of  Jesus. 
"Resist  not  evil"  means  absolute  non-resistance  under 
all  circumstances,  —  a  disciple  of  Christ  may  not  use  force 
to  protect  himself  or  his  family  from  physical  violence. 
Jesus  says,  "Judge  not,"  and  this  forbids  courts  and 
judges  for  the  punishment  of  criminals.  No  man  can 
be  a  Christian  and  assist  in  the  protection  of  person  and 
property  by  governments,  nor  can  he  support  govern- 
ments by  paying  taxes. 

To  all  objections  to  this  interpretation  Tolstoi  replies 
by  the  simple  assertion,  "Christ  must  have  meant  what 
he  said."  Doubtless,  but  this  does  not  close  the  ques- 
tion ;  on  the  contrary,  it  becomes  the  more  necessary  to 
ask,  What  did  Christ  say?  Not  necessarily  what  the 
words  literally  imply,  still  less  what  Tolstoi  thinks  he 
said.  In  another  connection  Tolstoi  very  truly  remarks 
that  "Resist  not  evil,"  really  means,  "never  do  anything 
contrary  to  the  law  of  love."  It  is  astonishing  that  he 
does  not  see  that  the  law  of  love  sometimes  requires  re- 
sistance to  evil.  And  even  Tolstoi  does  not  consistently 
apply  his  theory  of  literal  interpretation.  When  he  comes 
to  the  injunction,  "Love  your  enemies,"  he  decides  that 
*'it  is  impossible  to  love  your  personal  enemies,"  hence 


ANARCHY  163 

Jesus  could  not  have  meant  that.  We  are  to  understand 
"neighbor"  as  equivalent  to  compatriot,  and  "enemy" 
to  foreigner.  What  Jesus  says  is,  You  must  not  love 
men  of  your  own  nation  and  hate  all  foreigners,  but  love 
all  men  alike,  of  whatever  race  or  nation.  Jesus  is  for- 
bidding war,  not  private  enmity  !  Thus  Tolstoi  does 
precisely  what  he  so  soundly  berates  the  theologians  for 
doing  —  he  explains  away  the  meaning  of  Christ's  words 
to  make  them  easier  to  obey. 

But  Tolstoi  does  not  altogether  overlook  the  economic 
side  of  the  problem  of  life  —  he  denies,  as  emphatically 
as  Proudhon,  the  right  of  private  property.  "Property 
signifies  that  which  has  been  given  to  me,  which  belongs 
to  me  exclusively ;  is  that  with  which  I  can  always  do 
anything  I  Hke ;  that  which  no  one  can  take  away  from 
me ;  that  which  will  remain  with  me  to  the  end  of  my 
life,  and  precisely  that  which  I  am  bound  to  use,  increase, 
and  improve.  Now  there  exists  but  one  such  piece  of 
property  for  any  man  —  himself."  Therefore,  men 
should  labor,  not  to  accumulate  possessions,  but  in  order 
to  fulfil  the  glad  law  of  our  existence.  Those  who  work 
in  order  to  fulfil  this  law  of  toil  may  "rid  themselves  of 
that  frightful  superstition  of  property."  But  Tolstoi 
nowhere  explains  on  what  ground,  whether  of  metaphys- 
ics or  morals,  we  should  refuse  to  call  that  one's  own  which 
he  has  gained  by  his  own  toil.  "If  what  my  hands  have 
produced  is  not  mine,  whose  is  it  ?"  the  laborer  may  cry. 
"What  title  to  it  has  my  neighbor  who  has  not  toiled; 
or  what  title  have  I  to  the  fruits  of  his  toil  ?  "  And  what 
is  the  answer  ? 

The  first  principle  of  Christian  sociology,  says  Tolstoi, 
is  that  money  is  the  cause  of  suffering  and  vice  among 


l64  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

the  people ;  and  if  one  desires  to  help  the  poor,  the  first 
thing  required  of  him  is  not  to  create  those  unfortunates 
whom  he  wishes  to  assist.  If  he  would  really  help  people, 
one  "should  not  make  use  of  money,  thus  presenting  an 
inducement  to  extortion  from  the  poor,  by  forcing  them 
to  work  for  him ;  and  in  order  not  to  make  use  of  the 
toil  of  others,  he  must  demand  as  little  from  them  as 
possible,  and  work  as  much  as  possible  himself."  In 
work  Tolstoi  finds  the  great  social  panacea,  and  the  only 
sort  of  work  that  he  seems  to  recognize  in  his  later  writings 
is  manual  labor.  For  science,  art,  literature,  he  seems 
to  cherish  only  feelings  of  contempt ;  and  the  time  spent 
in  the  writing  of  his  novels,  upon  which  his  fame  chiefly 
rests,  he  regards  as  wasted  or  worse.  "Everything  that 
we  call  culture  —  our  sciences,  art,  and  the  perfection  of 
the  pleasant  things  of  life  —  all  these  are  attempts  to 
deceive  the  moral  requirements  of  man."  And  as  far 
as  his  family  would  permit,  Tolstoi  in  his  later  years  went 
back  to  the  life  of  a  peasant  —  wearing  the  peasant's 
dress  and  working  with  his  hands  at  the  plough  and  at 
the  cobbler's  bench.  The  problem  of  life  being  to  save 
the  soul,  a  man  must  renounce  all  pleasures;  he  must 
labor,  be  humble,  endure,  and  be  charitable  to  all  men. 
Community  of  property,  non-resistance  to  evil,  abstinence 
from  all  duties  towards  government,  are  the  cardinal 
points  in  this  theory  of  Anarchy.  Tolstoi's  literary  fame 
and  literary  skill  in  the  effective  presentation  of  his 
thought  have  secured  for  him  a  sympathetic  hearing  in 
many  quarters  to  which  other  anarchistic  literature  would 
never  have  been  admitted.  How  many  have  believed 
his  new  gospel  is  another  question. 


ANARCHY  165 


The  difficulties  to  be  met  and  solved  by  anarchistic 
communism  are  not  economic,  as  we  have  seen,  but  hu- 
man. All  attempts  at  revolution  thus  far  have  failed, 
or  have  at  least  been  only  partially  successful,  because 
the  real  problem  has  hitherto  been  misunderstood  and 
therefore  has  not  been  attacked  in  the  right  way.  The 
Paris  Commune  failed  in  187 1  because  its  members  busied 
themselves  with  ideas  of  government,  instead  of  proceed- 
ing at  once  to  the  industrial  reorganization  of  society. 
Kropotkin  believes  that  the  people  have  unsuspected 
capabilities  of  organization,  and  could  solve  for  them- 
selves all  the  complex  difficulties  of  a  new  social  order. 
But  to  most  persons  who  read  this  portion  of  his  writings 
he  will  appear  to  be  only  a  wild  and  impractical  fanatic. 
He  frankly  avows  himself  a  Utopian,  and  for  Utopias  the 
world  at  large  has  no  longer  use.  The  fatally  weak  point 
in  his  revolutionary  programme  is  his  tacit  assumption 
that  the  present  holders  of  property  will  sit  still  and  per- 
mit the  Revolution  to  despoil  them,  without  having  been 
first  convinced  that  they  are  to  be  benefited  by  the  social 
change,  as  well  as  the  proletariat.  He  who  believes  this 
sets  at  naught  all  the  teachings  of  history,  and  all  that 
is  known  of  human  nature.  The  holders  of  property  are 
in  an  overwhelming  majority  in  the  present  social  order, 
and  until  the  small  holders  are  convinced  of  the  pro- 
priety of  a  change  they  will  help  the  wealthy  few  fight 
for  their  own,  if  need  be.  The  Revolution  of  a  minority 
against  a  majority  can  never  succeed ;  if  it  wins  a  tem- 
porary triumi)h,  it  will  be  to  suffer  the  greater  downfall. 
On  the  other  hand,  whenever  a  majority  are  convinced 


1 66  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

that  change  is  expedient,  the  Revolution  will  have  been 
virtually  accompHshed,  and  that  without  violence  or 
bloodshed.  The  anarchist  will  do  well,  therefore,  to 
imitate  the  socialist,  and  gain  converts  to  his  views  as 
rapidly  as  he  may. 

Since  Bakunin,  one  school  of  anarchists  has  pursued 
this  policy,  and  they  are  known  as  philosophical  anar- 
chists. By  society  at  large  they  are  looked  upon  as  a  class 
of  mild  and  harmless  lunatics,— Httle  children  in  mind, 
who  know  no  better  than  to  cry  for  the  moon.  Their 
theories  are  regarded  as  flatly  contradicting  the  facts  of 
human  nature  as  it  now  exists.  Their  social  ideal  would 
possibly  be  suited  to  angels,  but  is  certainly  not  adapted 
to  men  until  the  arrival  of  the  millennium.  It  practically 
assumes,  though  no  anarchist  is  absurd  enough  explicitly 
to  assert,  that  if  men  were  perfectly  free,  nobody  would 
wrong  his  neighbor,  nobody  would  commit  an  act  of  tres- 
pass or  violence  or  passion  !  Kropotkin's  notion  is  that 
the  working-man  has  something  inherently  noble  and  un- 
selfish in  his  nature,  that  is  kept  down  by  his  oppressed 
state,  but  would  at  once  burgeon  into  life  and  fruitage 
if  he  achieved  economic  freedom.  The  employer,  the 
capitalist,  has  economic  freedom ;  where  is  his  noble  and 
unselfish  character  ?  The  toiler  and  the  employer  are 
of  the  same  flesh  and  blood  —  the  one  is  just  as  selfish, 
just  as  greedy,  just  as  ready  to  resort  to  violence  and  in- 
justice to  gain  his  ends,  just  as  little  likely  to  consider 
anybody  but  himself  and  his  own  interests,  as  the  other  — 
and  no  more  so.  Kropotkin  has  been  profoundly  im- 
pressed by  examples  of  unselfish  devotion  shown  to  their 
fellows  and  their  cause  by  some  workers.  But  the  same 
qualities  are  occasionally  shown  in  every  class,  including 


ANARCHY  167 

the  class  of  employers  —  and  only  occasionally  in  any 
class.  It  is  sad,  but  it  is  true;  such  quahties  are  the 
exception  and  not  the  rule,  in  every  walk  of  life. 

Dr.  Anton  Menger  recognizes  the  folly  of  assuming 
that  human  nature  will  undergo  a  great  change  for  the 
better  under  SociaUsm  or  Anarchy.  He  assumes  that 
human  nature  will  remain  essentially  unchanged,  that 
men  will  continue  to  be  actuated  by  self-interest  under 
the  new  order,  as  they  have  been  under  the  old ;  and  his 
speculations  about  the  probable  in  a  revolutionized  so- 
ciety are  based  on  this  hypothesis,  not  on  the  assumption 
of  a  miraculously  perfected  humanity.  This  is  the  only 
rational  procedure.  It  has  sometimes  happened  that  a 
group  of  men  have  found  themselves  relieved  of  all  re- 
straints of  law  and  order  —  as  in  a  mining  camp,  or  after 
a  mutiny  at  sea.  The  result  was  invariably  a  hell  on 
earth.  With  evil  passions  unchained,  and  might  making 
right,  life  became  intolerable  to  the  weak  and  peace- 
loving.  There  was  no  security  for  Kfe,  property,  or  vir- 
tue until  a  government  was  once  more  established,  strong 
enough  to  execute  Justice  on  evil-doers  and  maintain 
order,  even  if  it  were  only  the  supremacy  of  Judge  Lynch. 
No  sane  man  can  doubt  that  if  it  were  possible  to 
estabHsh  anarchistic  communism  anywhere  to-da}-,  with 
human  nature  as  it  now  is,  the  outcome  would  be  some 
form  of  despotism,  and  that  speedily.  After  enduring 
for  a  time  the  evils  of  a  society  in  which  the  weak  would 
be  at  the  mercy  of  the  strong,  men  would  in  desperation 
accept  any  authority  that  promised  them  peace  and 
protection  —  and  the  old  contest  for  freedom  and  equal 
rights  would  have  to  be  begun  over  again  from  the 
beginning. 


1 68  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

Aside  from  this  inherent  impracticability  of  commu- 
nism is  the  fact  that  it  contemplates  a  levelling  down, 
rather  than  a  levelling  up,  of  mankind.  It  is  like  that 
bastard  democracy,  which  looks  at  the  man  higher  in 
the  social  scale  and  says  defiantly,  ''I  am  as  good  a  man 
as  you  are,  any  day";  while  the  true  democracy  looks 
at  the  man  beneath  and  says,  "You  are,  or  are  capable  of 
becoming,  as  good  a  man  as  I  am,  and  here^s  my  hand  to 
help  you  rise."  The  communist,  in  like  manner,  gazes 
at  the  richer  man  and  says,  ''You  are  my  brother,  there- 
fore share  your  wealth  with  me,"  but  never  looks  at  the 
man  still  poorer  than  himself,  nor  thinks  to  say,  '^  I  am 
your  brother,  therefore  share  with  me  what  I  possess." 
Men  of  sense  and  men  of  heart  alike  have  rejected  com- 
munism. 

VI 

But  there  is  also  a  party  of  violent  anarchists,  widely 
distributed  among  all  the  countries  of  Europe  and  trans- 
planted to  America ;  everywhere  a  source  of  danger, 
which  at  times  becomes  imminent.  The  most  numerous 
group  of  this  party  is  found  in  Russia,  where  it  is  generally 
known  under  the  name  of  Nihilists.  The  name  was  first 
invented  and  used  by  the  Russian  novelist  Turgenieff, 
in  his  "Fathers  and  Sons"  (1861),  to  describe  a  move- 
ment for  general  emancipation  in  Russia.  There  had 
been  a  liberal  movement,  rather  than  a  liberal  party,  in 
Russia  since  1825,  which  became  more  definite  in  its  aims 
from  1870  onward,  largely  because  of  the  spread  of  the 
doctrines  of  Bakunin  and  Marx.  This  movement  took 
its  deepest  hold  on  the  young  men  in  the  universities. 
The  publication  and  teaching  of  liberal  doctrines  was 


ANARCHY  169 

prohibited  by  the  alarmed  Russian  government,  and  the 
policy  of  repression  increased  in  energy,  until  in  1876  and 
1877  the  prisons  were  filled  with  real  or  suspected  prop- 
agandists of  political  and  social  reform. 

Such  governmental  tyranny  led  to  the  result  that  might 
have  been  anticipated,  the  organization  of  secret  so- 
cieties for  the  promotion  of  social  revolution;  and,  as 
insurrection  was  an  impractical  remedy,  in  the  condition 
of  Russia,  the  Nihilists  adopted  assassination  as  a  means 
of  terrorizing  the  ruling  class  into  acquiescence.  A  series 
of  attempts  on  the  lives  of  officials  followed,  with  varying 
degrees  of  success ;  beginning  with  the  shooting  of  Gen- 
eral Trepoflf  by  Vera  Zasulich  (January  28,  1878),  and 
culminating  in  the  bomb-killing  of  Emperor  Alexander 
II  (March  13,  1881). 

The  Russian  government  was  once  wittily  described 
by  Talleyrand  as  "an  absolute  despotism,  mitigated  by 
assassination,"  but  these  Nihilist  killings  failed  to  miti- 
gate. They  did  not  produce  the  expected  effect.  The 
ruling  class  was  not  terrorized,  —  if  frightened  at  all,  it 
was  frightened  into  more  extreme  measures  of  violence 
and  repression,  instead  of  into  yielding.  Reform  of  any 
sort  was  further  postponed,  rather  than  hastened,  by 
the  policy  adopted  by  the  Nihilists.  To  quote  Talley- 
rand again,  *'It  was  worse  than  a  crime  —  it  was  a  blun- 
der." This  is  an  undoubted  political  and  social  fact, 
that  stands  quite  apart  from  the  question  whether  the 
Nihilists  had  an  abstract  ethical  justification  for  their 
action.  It  was  wrong  to  kill  the  Tsar,  because  it  was 
quite  useless. 

At  the  close  of  the  Russo-Japanese  War  there  was  an 
astonishing  social  turmoil  in  Russia  for  a  time,  in  which 


lyo  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

anything  seemed  possible.  A  dangerous  mutiny  in  the 
navy,  followed  by  a  less  serious  outbreak  in  the  army, 
was  accompanied  by  a  general  strike  among  artisans, 
and  threw  the  nation  into  disorder  for  some  weeks.  A 
repetition  of  the  French  Revolution  was  looked  for,  and 
by  some  confidently  prophesied.  Other  countries,  nota- 
bly Germany,  felt  the  influence  of  this  Russian  ferment. 
In  a  speech  made  at  Jena,  Herr  Bebel  said:  "The  strug- 
gle in  Russia  chills  the  marrow  of  our  rulers.  They  have 
a  deadly  fear  that  the  fire  may  cross  the  border.  They 
say  to  themselves,  'If  that  is  possible  in  Russia  where 
there  is  no  organization  and  the  proletariat  is  compara- 
tively small,  what  may  happen  in  Germany  where  we  have 
politically  enlightened  masses  and  an  organized  prole- 
tariat?'" 

In  fact,  nothing  did  happen,  even  in  Russia.  The 
strength  of  the  government  was  underestimated,  as  was 
the  strength  of  Russian  conservatism.  The  Tsar  had 
proclaimed  a  sort  of  Constitution,  the  people  were  to  have 
a  Douma,  and  the  storm  passed.  The  ruling  classes  re- 
covered their  courage,  and  then  their  power,  and  the  good 
old  way  of  repression  and  imprisonments,  flogging  and 
Siberia,  has  been  restored  with  greater  vigor  and  rigor 
than  ever.  Nihilism  has  become  quiescent  for  a  time, 
but  there  are  occasional  symptoms  of  its  revival,  in  the 
sudden  and  violent  taking  off  of  several  peculiarly  ob- 
noxious officials. 

Some  Americans  who  have  personally  known  many  of 
those  engaged  in  the  Nihilist  movement  testify  concern- 
ing them  that  they  are  men  of  a  remarkably  high  type  of 
character.  Many  come  from  the  upper  classes  of  society ; 
nearly  all  are  of  the  educated  classes.     They  have  shown 


ANARCHY  171 

themselves  capable  of  self-sacrifice,  patriotism,  and  de- 
votion to  their  cause  that  have  seldom  been  surpassed. 
It  is  difficult  for  Americans  to  judge  them  or  their  methods 
sympathetically  and  impartially,  since  our  social  and 
political  conditions  are  so  utterly  different.  Their  provo- 
cations are  great,  their  abuses  cry  to  heaven ;  the  char- 
acter of  the  Russian  government  and  laws,  so  unspeakable, 
must  be  taken  into  account.  Wliat  should  we  do  under 
like  circumstances  ?  We  do  not  know,  we  cannot  know, 
but  we  can  guess. 

Aside  from  Russia,  violent  anarchism  is  strongest  at 
present  in  southern  Europe,  especially  in  Spain.  Here 
its  methods  of  bomb  and  dagger  are  wholly  without  ex- 
cuse. Where  a  government  represses  freedom  of  speech, 
and  punishes  by  foulest  outrages  such  utterance  of  opin- 
ions as  is  tolerated  in  every  free  country,  and  sends  to 
lifelong  exile  any  who  join  a  society  of  whatever  sort  for 
the  promotion  of  social  reform,  violent  methods  may  be 
excused  if  not  justified.  But  where  discussion  is  free, 
where  the  rights  of  association  and  public  assemblage 
are  permitted,  where  the  ballot  and  representative  gov- 
ernment exist,  the  people  have  it  in  their  power  to  change 
or  overthrow  existing  institutions  whenever  they  please. 
If  institutions  stand  under  such  conditions,  it  is  plainly 
because  the  majority  will  them  to  stand  —  not  entirely 
content  with  them,  perhaps,  but  not  yet  ready  to  replace 
them  with  others.  In  such  countries  violence  is  utterly 
indefensible  —  it  can  only  mean  the  attempt  of  a  minor- 
ity to  coerce  the  majority. 

Yet  there  is  hardly  a  country  of  Europe  that  has  not 
suffered  from  these  anarchist  crimes.  Unsuccessful  at- 
tempts have  been  made  on  the  lives  of  Emperor  William  I 


172  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

of  Germany  (1878)  and  the  king  and  queen  of  Spain 
(1906),  and  four  rulers  have  been  killed :  President  Car- 
not  of  France  (1894),  Empress  Elizabeth  of  Austria 
(1898),  King  Humbert  of  Italy  (1900),  and  King  Carlos 
I  of  Portugal  (1908).  To  which  must  be  added  the  kill- 
ing of  President  WilHam  McKinley  in  1901.  In  every 
one  of  these  instances  the  crime  was  absolutely  senseless 
—  the  death  of  the  slain  ruler  could  by  no  possibility 
produce  a  change  of  poHtical  policy.  So  far  as  such  wan- 
ton crimes  are  not  the  result  of  a  species  of  insanity,  being 
committed  by  men  of  weak  mind,  unbalanced  by  revo- 
lutionary teachings  of  anarchistic  leaders  ■ —  they  can 
subserve  no  purpose  but  a  demonstration  of  the  ability 
of  anarchists  to  kill  when  they  choose.  But  nobody 
doubts  that.  From  ancient  times  it  has  been  known  that 
any  ruler  could  be  struck  down  by  an  assassin  ready  to 
give  his  own  life  in  exchange. 

There  was  more  method  in  the  Haymarket  outrage  in 
Chicago  (1886),  by  which  several  policeman  engaged  in 
dispersing  an  anarchist  gathering  were  killed.  Public 
opinion  at  the  time  demanded  victims,  and  as  the  real  cul- 
prit could  not  be  hanged  (the  man  who  threw  the  bomb 
disappeared,  and,  though  his  identity  becam.e  known, 
was  never  apprehended),  several  persons  only  construc- 
tively guilty  and  others  quite  innocent  were  convicted 
and  hanged,  to  the  lasting  shame  of  the  commonwealth 
of  Illinois.  With  this  exception,  anarchists  have  en- 
gaged in  no  form  of  revolutionary  violence  in  the  United 
States.  There  is,  of  course,  less  justification  for  violent 
measures  here,  since  the  people  have  and  always  have  had 
and  always  may  have  precisely  what  government  and 
laws  they  desire.     If  our  laws  are  unjust  and  our  govern- 


ANARCHY 


173 


ments  corrupt,  as  we  are  frequently  assured  is  the  case, 
and  as  most  of  us  partly  or  wholly  believe,  it  is  because 
we  do  not  care  enough  to  have  them  otherwise  to  take 
a  little  trouble  to  mend  them.  Whenever  we  shall  really 
desire  a  change,  we  shall  have  one  speedily. 

Anarchy  has  made  little  impression  on  the  educated 
classes  of  any  country  but  Russia,  and  the  reason  is  that 
the  theory  is  too  exclusively  negative  and  destructive. 
On  the  constructive  side  it  is  hopelessly  visionary  and 
impractical.  Its  collectivism  is  the  only  element  that  it 
has  in  common  with  Socialism,  and  the  contact  of  the 
two  systems  even  at  that  point  is  more  apparent  than 
real,  as  Prince  Kropotkin  makes  plain.  Socialism  to-day 
does  not  demand,  like  Anarchy,  the  violent  overthrow  of 
existing  institutions,  but  looks  for  a  new  and  better  or- 
ganized society  through  a  gradual  and  orderly  develop- 
ment. While  the  economic  basis  of  the  two  systems  is  not 
radically  different,  the  ethical  and  practical  aims  of  the 
two  are  as  wide  apart  as  the  poles.  Anarchy  aims  at  a 
liberty  as  absolute  and  complete  as  is  compatible  with  the 
continued  existence  of  men  in  communities;  Socialism 
aims  at  the  fullest  development  of  organized  society,  and 
a  collectivism  in  the  production  and  distribution  of  wealth 
that  means  less  liberty  of  personal  action  in  some  direc- 
tions than  most  men  now  possess.  Anarchy  is  the  apothe- 
osis of  individualism,  the  negation  of  organization  and 
law ;  SociaKsm  means  the  perfection  of  systematic  co- 
operation, organization  developed  to  its  highest  point  of 
efficiency. 

Anarchy  has  certain  features  that  help  us  understand 
the  hold  it  has  obtained  on  educated  and  aspiring  minds, 
combined  with  a  certain  temperamental  type.     A  lofty 


174  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

altruism  is  at  the  basis  of  its  philosophy,  economics,  and 
ethics.  Whatever  professes  to  be  for  the  good  of  man, 
or  his  physical  and  moral  uplift,  is  so  far  in  harmony  with 
all  that  Christians  profess.  The  fundamental  ideas  of 
Anarchy :  justice,  liberty,  equality,  are  ideals  that  the 
Christian  also  professes  to  love  and  to  seek.  Such  ideas 
were  promJnent  in  the  legislation  of  Moses  and  in  the 
teaching  of  Jesus.  Anarchy  also  builds,  as  on  a  corner- 
stone, on  faith  in  the  perfectibility  of  man.  So  do 
Christians  —  given  time  and  the  grace  of  God.  The 
weakness  of  Anarchy  is  that  it  rejects  both  time  and 
grace  as  unnecessary  elements  —  the  Revolution  would 
instantly  bring  to  the  front  and  necessarily  develop  the 
best  in  man,  while  the  worst,  being  the  product  of  op- 
pression, poverty,  and  ignorance,  would  at  once  begin 
to  dwindle  and  would  speedily  disappear.  An  irides- 
cent dream,  contradicted  by  all  human  experience  up  to 
this  very  hour  ! 

By  its  hostility  to  Christianity,  Anarchy  has  rejected 
the  only  ally  that  promises  the  least  encouragement  to 
the  practical  working  of  its  social  theories.  For,  if  the 
time  ever  comes  when  men  can  live  here  on  earth  in  a 
society  in  which  law  shall  be  unknown  and  force  urmeces- 
sary,  it  will  be  because  the  principles  of  Jesus  Christ  have 
become  so  implanted  in  human  hearts  that  all  men  love 
their  neighbors  as  themselves.  Where  that  law  prevails, 
it  is  true  that  no  other  law  will  be  needed,  and  there  will 
no  longer  be  a  social  problem,  because  no  man  will  look 
on  his  own  things,  but  every  man  also  on  the  things  of 
others. 


VI 

SOCIALISM   IN   ENGLAND 


BIBLIOGR-\PH\' 

Socialistic  literature :  — 
Godwin,  An  Inquin,-  concerning  Political  Justice  and  its  Influence 

on  General  \irtue  and  Happiness.     London,  1793. 
O^^TX,  A  New  \'iew  of  Society.     London,  1S13. 
Jones,  Life,  Times,  and  Labors  of  Robert  Owen,  ''Social  Science 

Series,"  1S90. 
^loRRis,  News  from  Nowhere.     London,  1S91. 
Blatchtord,  !Merrie  England.     London,  1S95. 

,  God  and  My  Neighbor.     Chicago,  1910. 

Fabian  Essays.     London,  1S90. 

Fabian  Tracts,  1-136.     London,  1907. 

Hyn-dman,  Economics  of  Socialism.     London,  1909. 

Wells,  New  Worlds  for  Old.     New  York.  190S. 

\'iLLiERS,  The  Socialist  ^Movement  in  England.     London,  1908. 

Books  of  general  information  :  — 
Booth,  Life  and  Labor  in  London,  Part  III :  Rehgious  Influences, 

Vols.  I-\TI.     London,  1902. 
S1LA.W,  Municipal  Government  in  Great  Britain.  New  York,  1S94. 

Bitterly  hostile :  — 
TowLER,    Socialism    and   Local    Government,  Handbook  of  the 
London  ^Municipal  Society.     New  York,  1909. 


VI 


SOCIALISM  IN  ENGLAND 

Only  within  the  last  two  decades  has  Socialism  made 
any  considerable  progress  in  England.  Compared  with 
Germany,  France,  Italy,  or  even  Spain,  the  tight  little 
island  is  unfruitful  soil.  The  British  character  is  un- 
favorable to  Socialism,  since  it  is  above  all  things  devoted 
to  the  "practical,"  and  has  as  little  tolerance  for  an 
"ideologist"  as  the  great  Napoleon.  The  EngHshman 
prides  himself  on  being  the  very  antipodes  of  a  French- 
man ;  he  does  not  insist  on  reforming  an  abuse  because 
it  is  irrational,  but  because  it  is  inconvenient.  A  French- 
man, on  the  contrary,  is  more  annoyed  by  the  irrational- 
ity of  an  abuse  than  by  its  inconvenience.  Owing  to 
this  peculiar  mental  constitution,  no  people  are  so  inac- 
cessible to  ideas  as  the  English.  They  demand  concrete 
propositions;  they  must  be  shown  defmite  advantages 
to  be  gained ;  abstract  principles  and  general  truths 
merely  irritate  them. 

The  comprehensive  revolutionary  ideals  of  Socialism, 
therefore,  are  thus  far  understood  only  by  a  few  of  the 
educated  middle  class.  Among  the  working-class,  where 
Socialism  might  be  expected  to  flourish,  it  is  only  just 
beginning  to  get  a  foothold.  The  British  artisan  is  quite 
as  conservative  and  insular,  in  his  way,  as  the  aristocracy. 
Talk  to  him  of  an  eight-hour  day,  and  he  understands 
you  ;  begin  to  speak  of  the  rights  of  labor,  and  he  stares 
N  177 


17S  SOOALISAI  AND   THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

at  you  and  turns  away.  Sydney  Smith  said  that  a  sur- 
gical operation  was  necessan.-  to  get  a  joke  into  the  head 
of  a  Scotchman ;  nothing  less  will  suffice  to  get  a  general 
political  or  social  principle  into  an  Englishman's  head. 
He  has  been  slow  even  to  give  a  fair  hearing  to  the  ad- 
vocates of  Socialism,  and  only  the  hard  pounding  of 
events  has  wrought  in  him  a  partial  com-iction. 


The  earlier  English  Socialism  was  the  product  of  the 
industrial  condition  of  the  countr>-.  England  had  special 
advantages  for  taking  the  lead  in  the  great  modem  de- 
velopment of  Capitalism.  She  had  control  of  the  sea.  and 
was  able  to  extend  and  protect  her  commerce  as  no  other 
nation  could  Her  insular  position  was  favorable  to 
commerce,  and  assured  her  special  protection  in  time  of 
war ;  so  that  less  of  her  revenues  had  to  be  expended  on  a 
standing  army.  She  had  been  ever  foremost  in  coloniza- 
tion, and  had  markets  all  over  the  world  ready  to  absorb 
her  products.  She  was  rich  in  mineral  wealth,  and  for- 
tunate above  ever\-  other  nation  in  ha\-ing  coal  and  iron 
side  by  side,  thus  lessening  the  cost  of  production  by 
economizing  transportation.  She  had  a  suitable  climate, 
Hable  to  the  extremes  of  neither  hot  nor  cold.  In  short, 
nature  and  her  own  pre\-ious  histon,-  had  combined  to 
shower  upon  England  all  possible  advantages  for  out- 
stripping her  competitors,  when  the  advent  of  machinery 
created  a  new  era  in  the  world's  industrial  history-. 

In  no  other  countn,-  was  the  laboring  class  more  stolid 
and  stupid,  less  alive  to  its  own  interests,  less  capable 
of  any  common  action  to  promote  the  common  welfare. 
It  had  no  voice  in  the  government  of  England.     The  up- 


SOCL\LISM  IX  ENGLAND  1 79 

per  classes  had  made  the  law,  and  combinations  of  work- 
ers were  all  but  impossible.  Even  combinations  of  caj>- 
italists  had  been  illegal  under  the  common  law,  a  cor- 
poration being  presumed  to  be  in  restraint  of  trade,  and 
so  unlawful,  unless  it  could  obtain  a  royal  charter  and 
so  acquire  a  legal  standing.  Public  opinion  at  first  looked 
on  corporations  much  as  the  Trust  is  regarded  to-day, 
when  the  belief  widely  prevails  that  the  only  good  Trust 
is  a  smashed  Trost.  But  the  capitalists,  being  intelli- 
gent, set  about  changing  both  public  opinion  and  law, 
and  in  time  succeeded.  Combinations  of  those  ha\Tng 
property  became  possible,  but  combinations  of  those 
who  had  no  property*  were  made  stiU  less  possible.  For 
the  capitalists,  not  content  with  the  legalizing  of  their 
corporations,  obtained  the  passage  of  the  Combination 
Act  (1799)  which  made  all  trades-unions  illegal.  Under 
that  oppressive  statute,  any  persons  who  combined  to 
advance  wages,  or  affect  those  who  carried  on  manufac- 
ture or  trade,  in  the  conduct  and  management  thereof, 
might  be  con\dcted  before  a  single  justice  of  the  peace 
and  imprisoned  in  the  common  jail  not  exceeding  three 
months,  or  be  kept  to  hard  labor  in  the  house  of  correc- 
tion not  exceeding  two  months.  Surelv,  the  tender  mer- 
cies  of  the  capitalist  are  cruel.- 

The  better  to  keep  the  working-class  quiet  under  such 

^  Though  the  Combmations  of  Workmen  Act  of  1824  rqjealed  thirty- 
four  axitiquated  and  inhuman  statutes,  some  as  early  as  Edward  I  (1304), 
prescribing  such  penalties  as  imprisonment,  the  pilloiy  and  mutilation 
for  the  awful  crime  of  "conspiring"  not  to  work  but  at  a  certain  rate  or 
price,  or  to  work  only  at  certain  hours,  and  England  thus  took  her  stand 
among  dvilized  nations,  an  act  passed  the  following  year  declared  in  its 
preamble  that  all  combinations  of  workmen  "are  injurious  to  trade  and 
commerce,  dangerous  to  the  tranquillity  of  the  country  and  espedaDy 
prejudicial  to  the  interest  of  all  who  are  concerned  in  them." 


l8o  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

oppression,  and  as  an  anodyne  for  the  more  tender  con- 
sciences among  the  upper  classes,  a  system  of  poHtical 
economy  was  expounded  which  assured  the  laborer  that 
he  was  doing  very  wrong  to  kick  against  the  pricks,  and 
discouraged  every  attempt  to  alleviate  his  lot.  Adam 
Smith  and  his  successors  argued  that  the  condition  of  the 
workers  was  the  result  of  the  "laws"  governing  the  pro- 
duction and  distribution  of  wealth.  These  "laws"  were 
asserted  to  be  as  immutable  as  gravitation,  since  they 
were  the  unvarying  result  of  universal  principles  of  human 
nature.  Pupils  of  the  greater  teachers  gravely  ex- 
pounded these  "laws"  to  the  worker,  and  solemnly  told 
him  that  he  was  crying  for  the  moon. 

The  two  primary  "  laws"  of  this  new  science  were: 
that  self-interest  is  the  sole  actuating  motive  of  all  men 
in  business  transactions,  and  to  buy  in  the  cheapest  mar- 
ket and  sell  in  the  dearest  is,  if  not  the  whole  duty  of  man, 
at  least  his  whole  aim ;  and  second,  that  prices  of  all 
commodities  are  fixed  by  supply  and  demand,  under  free 
competition,  and  to  interfere  with  free  competition  is 
dangerous  —  indeed,  considered  in  its  social  conse- 
quences, nothing  less  than  immoral.  It  was  a  long  time 
before  men  discovered  that  these  "laws"  were  the  result 
of  hasty  generalization  from  imperfect  data ;  that  they 
were  the  laws  of  an  imaginary  world,  not  of  this  real  world 
in  which  we  live ;  that  men  are  not  moved  by  self-inter- 
est alone ;  that  there  never  was  free  competition,  in  any 
society  of  any  age ;  that  the  law  of  supply  and  demand 
never  fully  operated  —  in  short,  that  the  political  econ- 
omy of  Smith  and  his  school  is  nothing  more  than  a 
pseudo-science,  and  its  "laws"  mostly  bugaboos  to 
frighten  people  in  their  intellectual  childhood. 


SOCIALISM  IN  ENGLAND  l8l 

Among  the  most  effective  of  these  bugaboos  was  the 
Wages  Fund ;  namely,  the  theory  that  there  is  at  any 
given  time  only  a  certain  sum  existing  that  can  be  divided 
among  the  wage-earning  class.  This  sum  being  fixed, 
the  wage  of  each  person  depends  on  the  divisor,  that  is, 
the  number  of  laborers.  It  is  in  vain,  therefore,  for 
laborers  to  combine  and  strike  for  higher  wages  —  higher 
wages  can  no  more  be  paid  than  a  pie  can  be  divided  into 
ten  quarters.^  The  Wages  Fund  was  long  regarded  by 
economists  as  almost  on  a  level  with  the  axioms  of  mathe- 
matics, and  to  question  it  was  to  cast  suspicion  on  one's 
entire  sanity.  It  was  finally  proved  to  be  nothing  more 
than  a  bugaboo,  by  the  fact  that,  though  the  trades- 
unions  were  assured  they  could  not  possibly  increase  their 
wages  by  combinations  and  strikes,  they  did  raise  wages 
steadily  by  just  these  methods.  And  then  the  economists 
reluctantl}^  gave  up  their  Wages  Fund. 

While  this  bugaboo  was  still  scaring  nervous  people, 
another  frightful  "law"  was  discovered,  to  teach  the 
working-man  to  keep  his  place  and  work  for  his  betters 
for  whatever  they  chose  to  give  him.  This  was  the 
"law  of  population,"  discovered  by  an  English  clergyman 
named  Malthus.  His  great  discovery  was  that  popula- 
tion tends  to  increase  in  a  geometrical  ratio,  while  food 
cannot  possibly  increase  faster  than  in  an  arithmetical 
ratio.  As  a  result,  there  is  a  constant  pressure  on  the 
means  of  subsistence,  which  necessarily  means  distress 
for  some.     The  only  cure  for  poverty  is  the  voluntary 

*  The  suppressed  premise  of  the  Wages  Fund  argument  was  that  the 
whole  pie  was  actually  divided  —  that  the  entire  Wages  Fund  was  paid 
out  in  wages  —  a  thing  that  noljody  attempted  to  prove,  or  even  to  state 
in  clear  terms,  lest  sensible  people  laugh  at  the  very  idea.  The  workers 
well  knew  that  employers  kept  a  large  slice  of  the  pic  for  themselves. 


l82  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

limiting  of  population,  by  later  marriage,  and  cultivating 
a  greater  sense  of  social  responsibility,  which  will  pre- 
vent people  from  bringing  into  the  world  more  children 
than  they  can  provide  for.  But  for  the  present  there  is 
no  cure  for  poverty ;  it  is  the  necessary  result  of  reckless 
over-population. 

Malthus  was  peculiarly  bitter  in  his  opposition  to 
Socialism,  and  all  theories  of  the  rights  of  man.  Man 
has  no  rights  :  "A  man  who  is  born  into  a  world  already 
possessed,  if  he  cannot  get  subsistence  from  his  parents 
on  whom  he  has  a  just  demand,  and  if  the  society  do  not 
want  his  labor,  has  no  claim  of  right  to  the  smallest  por- 
tion of  food,  and,  in  fact,  has  no  business  to  be  where  he 
is.  At  Nature'?  "nighty  feast  there  is  no  vacant  cover 
for  him.  She  tells  him  to  be  gone,  and  will  quickly 
execute  her  own  orders."  ^  That  is  to  say,  he  will  starve, 
and  serve  him  right,  for  being  born  into  a  world  where 
there  was  no  room  for  him. 

This  doctrine  of  Malthus  is  not  only  heartless,  but 
irrational.  Why  has  a  child  a  just  claim  on  his  parents 
for  subsistence?  Because  they  brought  him  into  the 
world ;  being  the  cause  of  his  existence,  they  are  bound 
to  see  that  he  has  means  to  exist.  But  the  same  thing  is 
true  of  society  at  large,  not  of  the  immediate  parents 
only.  Society  was  a  party  to  their  act,  and  cannot  shirk 
its  responsibility  for  the  existence  of  the  child.  By  en- 
couraging men  and  women  to  marry  and  give  life  to  chil- 
dren, society  underwrites  the  marriage  contract  and  as- 
sumes responsibility  for  children  not  cared  for  by  parents. 
And  it  may  well  be  disputed  whether  Malthus  has  cor- 

1  "On  Population,"  p.  513,  ed.  of  1803.  This  heartless  passage  was 
expunged  from  later  editions  of  the  writings  of  Malthus. 


SOCIALISM  IN  ENGLAND  183 

rectly  interpreted  the  voice  of  Nature,  for  he  has  affronted 
well-nigh  universal  instincts  by  the  words  he  puts  in  her 
mouth.  To  the  vast  majority  of  men  it  rather  seems 
that  Nature  says  to  every  child  born  into  the  world: 
"Come  to  the  table  and  take  your  share.  It  is  spread 
for  you,  as  much  as  for  those  who  arrived  before  you." 
Not  Malthus,  the  Christian  priest,  but  Blatchford,  the 
atheistic  journalist,  has  spoken  the  word  of  truth  about 
Nature's  feast :  "We  say  that  there  ought  not  to  be  any 
poor,  and  there  need  not  be  any  poor,  and  that  there 
would  not  be  any  poor,  if  our  Christians  were  not  in- 
fidels and  our  wealthy  classes  were  not  hogs."  Bitter 
words,  but  who  shall  say  they  are  not  deserved  ? 

Malthus  supplemented  his  "law  of  population"  with 
another  precious  "discovery,"  which  he  derived  from 
his  study  of  agriculture  and  named  the  "law  of  diminish- 
ing returns."  According  to  this  law,  supplies  of  food  can 
be  obtained  from  the  earth  only  by  an  increased  outlay 
from  year  to  year  of  labor  and  capital.  The  same  amount 
of  labor  and  capital  expended  year  after  year  brings  con- 
tinually lessening  returns.  The  expenditure  of  double 
the  labor  and  capital  will  bring  greater  returns,  but  never 
double  returns.  Hence  the  increase  in  the  production 
of  food  can  never  be  more  than  an  arithmetical  ratio. 
But  later  economists  have  been  compelled  to  recognize 
that  this  "law"  is  "suspended"  whenever  improvement 
in  methods  of  culture  occurs  —  in  other  words,  it  is  no 
law,  but  only  a  partial  induction  from  facts ;  if  true  at 
all,  true  only  for  limited  times  and  places.  It  is  merely 
a  pretentious  statement  in  "scientific"  form  of  the  fact 
known  to  everybody  who  has  ever  tilled  the  soil,  that 
land  tends  gradually  to  lose  its  fertility,  unless  something 


1 84  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

is  done  to  prevent  this  result.  But  it  has  also  become 
known  to  cultivators  that  if  soil  is  properly  treated,  its 
fertility  becomes  greater,  instead  of  less. 

The  supposed  law  fails  utterly  to  take  into  account  the 
enormous  rate  of  possible  increase  in  the  production  of 
food  by  means  of  machinery  and  intensive  farming. 
Since  Malthus  wrote  his  book,  there  has  been  such  a 
revolution  in  food  production  as  makes  his  prognostica- 
tions of  an  approaching  starvation  of  the  human  race  as 
little  practical  as  the  speculations  of  astronomers  regard- 
ing the  eventual  extinction  of  the  sun.  It  may  be  that, 
aeons  hence,  the  sun  will  cease  to  give  forth  enough  heat 
to  sustain  life  on  this  planet,  but  such  a  calamity  is  not 
worth  taking  into  account  in  any  present  computations 
or  forecasts.  That  population  will  at  some  time  reach 
the  extreme  limit  of  the  capacity  of  the  earth  to  produce 
food  is  arguable  as  an  abstract  proposition,  but  the  event 
is  too  many  thousands  of  years  distant  to  engage  the 
attention  of  any  but  idle  people  who  have  nothing  better 
to  occupy  their  minds  than  debating  such  academic  ques- 
tions. It  is  a  notorious  fact  that  wealth  of  all  kinds,  in- 
cluding food,  has  for  half  a  century  been  increasing  at  a 
rate  so  prodigiously  greater  than  population  as  to  make 
the  Malthusian  theory  a  joke.  The  problem  to-day,  and 
for  many  a  day  to  come,  may  be  stated  thus :  not  how 
to  limit  population  to  the  means  of  subsistence,  but  how 
to  secure  a  fair  distribution  among  the  population  of  the 
vast  quantity  of  wealth  produced.  It  was  because  the 
people  of  England  at  last  got  a  dim  inkling  of  the  terms 
of  this  problem,  and  began  to  perceive  more  clearly  and 
to  feel  more  keenly  the  inequality  of  the  present  distri- 
bution, in  spite  of  all  that  was  preached  to  them  in  the 


SOCIALISM   IN   ENGLAND  185 

name  of  political  economy  and  in  the  name  of  Christ,  that 
Socialism  had  its  first  beginning  among  them. 

n 

The  leader  in  the  socialistic  movement  was  Robert 
Owen  (1771-1858),  a  native  of  Wales,  where  he  received 
the  little  education  that  he  ever  received  in  schools.  The 
rest  of  his  training  came  from  life,  and  from  books  that 
he  read  in  his  leisure  hours;  and,  having  a  mind  both 
acute  and  receptive,  he  obtained  thus  a  more  adequate 
education  than  he  could  have  been  given  at  any  univer- 
sity of  his  time.  At  nine  years  of  age  poverty  compelled 
him  to  go  to  work.  His  qualities  of  body  and  mind  may 
be  inferred  from  the  fact  that,  with  such  beginnings,  he 
was,  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  the  manager  of  a  cotton  mill, 
in  which  five  hundred  workers  were  employed.  We  are 
not  surprised  to  read  of  him  that  he  formed  the  habit  of 
early  rising,  was  an  incessant  reader  as  well  as  a  diligent 
worker,  and  that  his  habits  were  faultless,  —  all  his  life 
he  was  a  total  abstainer  from  alcohol  and  tobacco.  Such 
a  boy  was  bound  to  rise.  Even  before  his  becoming  a 
manager  of  the  factory,  he  had  borrowed  a  little  money 
and  established  a  small  business  of  his  own,  in  which  he 
made  a  profit  of  £300  the  first  year.  He  thoroughly 
mastered  the  business  of  cotton  spinning,  and  made  his 
concern  a  model  mill.  As  long  as  he  remained  in  business, 
his  enterprises  were  successful.  It  is  important  to  re- 
member that  the  first  English  socialist  was  not  a  mere 
man  of  books,  an  impractical  dreamer  of  dreams,  but  a 
successful  manufacturer. 

These  early  years  of  Owen's  experience  in  the  cotton 
mill  were  probably  the  time  when  the  laboring  class  of 


1 86  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

England  was  at  its  lowest  point  of  wretchedness.  The 
Combination  acts  were  in  full  force,  and  employees  were 
completely  at  the  mercy  of  the  employer.  The  capitalist 
was  taught  by  economists  that  labor  was  a  commodity, 
like  any  other,  and  that  it  was  his  first  duty  to  recognize 
and  obey  the  great  law  of  supply  and  demand.  He  was 
concerned  only  to  get  his  labor  at  the  lowest  possible  price 
and  to  sell  his  product  at  the  highest  possible  price.  And 
he  was  assured  by  the  economists  that  to  do  the  best  for 
himself  was  in  the  end  to  do  the  best  for  others.  For 
the  welfare  of  his  laborers  he  was  in  no  way  responsible. 
To  hold  that  he  was  his  brother's  keeper,  was  to  defy  the 
sacred  "laws"  of  political  economy. 

The  profit  of  the  manufacturer  was  enormous,  incred- 
ible. Owen's  biographer  tells  us  that  he  was  able  to  buy 
a  pound  of  raw  cotton  for  five  shillings,  and  when  he  had 
made  it  into  yarn  to  sell  it  for  £9  18s.  6d.  Such  possible 
gains  stimulated  the  greed  of  mill  owners  until  their  con- 
duct passed  the  bounds  of  all  belief,  if  the  facts  were  not 
so  well  accredited.  Employers  found  that  child  labor 
was  most  profitable  of  all,  because  it  cost  almost  nothing. 
They  obtained  large  numbers  of  children  from  the  work- 
houses to  be  "apprentices."  These  apprentices  were 
housed  and  bedded  in  sheds,  fed  upon  the  cheapest  food 
and  not  enough  of  that,  clothed  mainly  in  rags,  and 
worked  in  shifts  night  and  day,  so  that  the  beds  in  which 
they  slept  were  never  cold.  The  sufferings  of  these  work- 
ers were  terrible,  but  not  until  disease  bred  under  such 
conditions  attacked  the  well-to-do  was  their  attention 
aroused.  There  is  no  more  appalling  episode  in  the 
history  of  the  English  people  than  this  condition  of  the 
factory  workers  a  hundred  years  ago.     Statesmen  taught 


SOCIALISM  IN  ENGLAND  1 87 

employers  that  any  interference  by  law  with  such  con- 
duct of  their  business  was  curtailment  of  liberty  ;  econo- 
mists taught  them  that  shortening  the  hours  of  labor 
necessarily  meant  lower  wages  for  the  workers ;  while 
their  own  selfishness  assured  them  that  more  humane 
treatment  of  their  work-people  meant  a  lessening  of  their 
profits.     What  wonder  the  abuses  continued  ? 

Robert  Owen  was  by  nature  a  quiet,  tolerant,  patient 
man,  the  reverse  in  temperament  of  the  ordinary  social 
agitator,  but  he  could  not  look  on  these  evils  and  do 
nothing  for  their  abatement.  He  set  himself  the  life- 
long task  of  doing  what  he  could  to  improve  the  condi- 
tion of  England's  laboring  classes.  He  had  but  to  per- 
severe as  he  had  begun  to  make  an  immense  fortune,  and 
accomphsh  the  ambition  of  most  Englishmen,  the  "found- 
ing of  a  family";  that  is,  establishing  his  descendants 
as  landowners,  and  possibly  as  nobles,  thenceforth  for 
generations  to  be  supported  in  idleness  and  luxury  by 
these  hopeless  toilers.  This  he  could  not  do.  On  the 
contrary,  he  began  to  provide  decent  homes  for  the  peo- 
ple in  his  mill,  and  to  encourage  them  to  form  habits  of 
cleanliness  and  thrift. 

In  1800,  Owen  became  manager  of  mills  at  New  Lanark, 
near  Glasgow,  which  he  had  persuaded  some  English 
capitalists  to  purchase,  with  a  view  of  giving  his  methods 
a  better  trial.  He  looked  upon  the  enterprise  as  a  great 
commercial  and  social  experiment,  not  a  mere  business, 
but  it  was  necessary  first  of  all  that  it  should  be  so  man- 
aged as  to  return  a  reasonable  profit  on  the  capital  in- 
volved. This,  from  first  to  last,  Owen  succeeded  in  doing. 
He  found  at  New  Lanark  a  population  of  about  two 
thousand,  considerably  below  the  average  in  moral  char- 


l88  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

acter,  as  a  prejudice  against  factory  employment  at  that 
time  prevailing  in  Scotland  naturally  caused  the  workers 
to  be  recruited  from  the  lowest  grade  of  the  people.  They 
were  suspicious  of  the  new  manager,  and  slow  to  be  con- 
vinced that  he  really  sought  their  good,  but  in  time  his 
efforts  overcame  their  prejudices  and  gained  for  him  their 
devoted  affection.  His  first  task  was  to  provide  decent 
houses  for  them,  and  the  next  to  establish  schools  in 
which  their  children  might  be  trained.  He  was  firmly 
convinced  that  by  thus  altering  the  conditions  and  sur- 
roundings of  the  people,  teaching  them  cleanliness  and 
self-respect  and  raising  the  standard  of  intelligence  among 
them,  a  corresponding  change  would  be  effected  in  their 
character.  And  though  all  who  heard  of  his  plans  re- 
garded his  scheme  as  visionary  and  impractical,  he  was 
given  a  free  hand ;  and,  by  the  testimony  of  all  who  knew 
the  facts,  he  did  effect  a  great  change  in  the  character  of 
the  people  of  New  Lanark. 

In  his  attempt  to  make  his  mills  model  concerns,  Owen 
was  forced  to  rebuild  or  rearrange  them  ;  to  improve  the 
sanitary  condition  of  the  buildings  and  surroundings ;  to 
secure  ample  light  and  air.  No  more  pauper  children 
were  received  ;  hours  of  labor  were  shortened.  Finding 
that  the  local  shops  sold  goods  of  poor  quality,  at  the 
highest  market  price,  the  company  established  shops 
under  Owen's  direction,  that  furnished  the  best  goods  at 
a  saving  of  twenty-five  per  cent  to  the  workmen.  But, 
though  a  good  profit  was  returned  from  the  business,  the 
investors  became  dissatisfied  at  the  spending  of  so  much 
money  in  improvements,  instead  of  distributing  it  as 
additional  dividends,  and  twice  Owen  was  compelled  to 
reorganize  his  company  and  obtain  the  support  of  other 


SOCIALISM  IN  ENGLAND  189 

capitalists.  He  was  finally  compelled  to  resign  his  posi- 
tion and  abandon  his  experiment,  because  of  the  meddle- 
someness of  a  Quaker  partner  in  the  enterprise,  who  was 
not  satisfied  with  the  quality  and  amount  of  the  religious 
instruction  given  to  the  people. 

There  is  no  question  that  Owen  himself  was  not  an 
orthodox  Christian  ;  to-day  he  would  probably  be  called 
a  liberal  Unitarian.  But  he  did  not  try  to  propagate  his 
views  of  religion  among  his  work-people ;  on  the  contrary, 
he  had  established  at  New  Lanark  a  complete  system  of 
religious  liberty.  Regarding  persecution  as  a  worse  error 
than  false  doctrine,  he  held  that  the  first  duty  of  all  men 
in  matters  of  religion  is  a  broad  tolerance.  It  was  his 
personal  belief  that  men's  religious  ideas  are  the  effect  of 
the  accident  of  birth  and  the  resulting  training  —  edu- 
cation imparts  these  ideas,  and  therefore  men  are  not  re- 
sponsible for  holding  them.  He  frankly  avowed  to  an 
inquirer:  "I  am  not  of  your  religion,  nor  of  any  religion 
yet  taught  in  the  world.  To  me  they  all  appear  united 
with  much  —  yes,  with  very  much  —  error."  But,  holding 
such  sentiments,  he  yet  insisted  on  the  full  right  of  each 
man  to  the  enjoyment  of  the  utmost  liberty  of  conscience. 
And  therefore  he  could  not  be  persuaded  to  have  any  sys- 
tem of  faith  inculcated  at  New  Lanark  as  a  sort  of  estab- 
lished religion.  Instead  of  that,  he  was  ready  to  co- 
operate in  maintaining  whatever  forms  of  worship  the 
people  themselves  desired.  Official  investigation  of  the 
conditions  there  showed  that  he  was  "not  known  to  have 
in  any  one  instance  endeavored  to  alter  the  religious 
opinions  of  persons  in  his  employment ;  that  the  desires  of 
his  workmen  to  attend  their  respective  places  of  worship 
are  complied  with  and  aided  to  the  utmost  extent ;   that 


190  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

a  minister  has  long  been  paid  by  the  proprietors  .  .  . 
for  performing  divine  service  in  the  Gaelic  tongue  to  the 
Highland  workmen ;  that  Mr.  Owen's  house  is  a  house  of 
daily  prayer." 

Owen  was  now  fifty-seven  years  of  age ;  he  had  gained 
a  modest  competence,  and  resolved  to  devote  himself 
thenceforth  to  philanthropic  effort.  During  his  work  at 
New  Lanark  he  had  begun  to  write  on  social  topics,  and  in 
his  "New  Views  of  Society,"  or  "Essays  on  the  Forma- 
tion of  Character"  (1812)  and  his  "Book  of  the  New 
Moral  World"  (1826-1844),  he  set  forth  the  ideas  that 
underlay  his  social  experiments.  It  is  clear  that  the 
fundamental  principle  of  his  Sociahsm  was  a  philosophic 
and  practical  determinism.  He  had  also  been  profoundly 
influenced  by  the  reading  of  Rousseau  and  other  writers 
of  the  French  Deistic  school,  not  so  much  by  their  ideas 
of  religion  as  by  their  theories  of  human  nature.  En- 
vironment and  heredity,  he  believed,  determine  charac- 
ter, and  of  these  the  greatest  is  environment.  Place  men 
under  proper  influences  from  infancy,  so  that  the  right 
physical,  moral,  and  social  training  may  be  given  them, 
and  right  character  will  result.^  His  remedy  for  all  the 
ills  of  society  was  education ;  but  by  education  he  meant 
not  merely  impartation  of  knowledge,  but  the  whole 
process  of  forming  character.  Education  in  this  sense  he 
believed  to  be  omnipotent.     His  success  in  elevating  the 

^  We  might  suppose  that  Owen  had  gone  farther  back  than  to  Rous- 
seau, if  we  had  any  reason  to  think  that  he  was  familiar  with  Plato.  "  Our 
youth  will  dwell  in  a  land  of  health,  amid  fair  sights  and  sounds,  and  re- 
ceive good  in  everything ;  and  beauty,  the  effluence  of  fair  works,  shall 
flow  into  the  eye  and  ear  like  a  health-giving  breeze  from  a  purer  region, 
and  insensibly  draw  the  soul  from  earliest  years  into  likeness  and  sym- 
pathy with  the  beauty  of  reason."  —  "Republic,"  Book  III. 


SOCIALISM  IN  ENGLAND  19I 

character  of  the  New  Lanark  population  naturally  con- 
firmed him  in  these  views ;  his  theory  had  seemed  to  work 
well  in  practice. 

Out  of  this  fundamental  notion  grew  all  the  practical 
schemes  of  Owen.  As  early  as  181 7,  he  undertook  to 
interest  the  influential  classes  of  England  in  making  trial 
of  his  ideas,  in  a  report  submitted  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons on  the  Poor  Law.  He  proposed  the  establishment, 
at  State  expense  and  under  State  supervision,  of  com- 
munities of  about  twelve  hundred  persons  on  from  one 
thousand  to  fifteen  hundred  acres  of  land  each.  The 
people  were  to  live  in  one  large  building,  each  family 
having  private  apartments,  but  a  pubhc  kitchen,  dining 
rooms,  etc.  Children  were  to  be  cared  for  by  their  par- 
ents until  three  years  old,  after  that  to  be  educated  by  the 
community  in  a  common  school.  Work  was  to  be  pro- 
vided for  all,  and  all  were  to  share  equally  in  its  fruits. 
Each  community  would  be  mainly  agricultural,  but  was 
to  own  machinery  and  ofi'er  to  its  members  every  variety 
of  employment,  so  that  it  would  be  a  self-dependent  unit. 
It  is  not  known  how  far  Owen  had  read  the  French 
socialists,  but  there  is  more  than  a  flavor  of  Fourierism 
in  this. 

It  seemed  at  first  that  there  might  be  at  least  a  chance 
of  making  an  experiment  along  the  lines  thus  suggested. 
Considerable  interest  was  roused  and  fair  progress  was 
making,  when  rumors  of  Owen's  lack  of  religious  ortho- 
doxy began  to  be  circulated.  When  questioned,  he 
frankly  avowed  his  beliefs.  Prejudice  was  thus  excited 
against  him,  and  he  did  not  lack  actual  detractors  among 
the  clergy.  The  Bishop  of  Exeter  went  so  far  as  to  charge 
him  with  "squandering  his  wealth  in  profligacy  and  lux- 


192  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

ury, "  —  a  charge  as  absurd  as  it  was  slanderous.  Those 
who  were  looking  for  a  decent  pretext  to  turn  the  cold 
shoulder  to  his  enterprise,  or  even  to  offer  active  opposi- 
tion to  it,  found  one  here ;  while  many  timid  people  who 
might  have  been  his  supporters  were  effectually  alien- 
ated.    The  whole  scheme  proved  abortive. 

Owen  was  more  successful  in  his  attempt  to  secure 
legislation  that  would  protect  the  workers  against  the 
greed  of  their  employers.  An  epidemic  at  Manchester, 
in  1802,  first  called  the  attention  of  the  Enghsh  people  to 
factory  conditions,  and  a  statute  was  passed  regulating 
the  conditions  of  employment  in  factories.  The  reforms 
thus  made  were  chiefly  sanitary,  and  the  hours  of  work 
were  permitted  to  remain  at  what  was  then  customary, 
twelve  hours  a  day  for  each  worker.  In  18 19  a  Factory 
Act  was  passed  by  Parliament,  but  it  was  so  emasculated 
through  the  influence  of  the  wealthy  manufacturers  as 
to  give  little  relief.  Owen  had  sought  to  make  the  age 
limit  for  employment  in  factories  ten  years,  and  the  time 
limit  ten  and  a  half  hours  a  day ;  Parliament  cut  the  age 
limit  to  nine  years,  and  left  the  day's  work  at  twelve 
hours.  The  chief  gain  was  that  the  statute  applied  to  all 
factories,  whereas  previous  laws  had  been  of  partial  appli- 
cation. It  was  not  until  1847  that  the  day's  work  was 
lowered  to  ten  hours,  and  then  only  for  women  and  chil- 
dren. In  the  name  of  "free  contract,"  the  legislators 
refused  to  limit  the  sacred  right  of  men  to  be  overworked 
as  much  as  employers  could  com.pel.^ 

1  How  little  is  to  be  expected  from  the  humanity  of  the  capitalistic 
class  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  eminent  "reformers"  like  John  Bright  and 
Richard  Cobden  opposed  the  English  statutes  against  child  labor.  It 
took  fifty  years  of  agitation  to  humanize  English  factories,  but  now  they 
are  far  in  advance  of  the  United  States  in  such  particulars. 


SOCIALISM   IN  ENGLAND  193 

Failing  to  induce  the  English  government  to  undertake 
socialistic  experiments,  Owen  undertook  them  for  himself. 
A  socialistic  colony,  conducted  on  his  principles,  was  at- 
tempted at  Abram  Combe,  near  Glasgow,  but  the  ex- 
periment from  which  most  was  hoped  was  made  at  New 
Harmony,  Indiana.  The  history  of  this  belongs,  however, 
to  a  later  chapter.  A  bank  on  the  principle  of  a  universal 
labor  exchange  was  another  of  Owen's  enterprises.  All 
of  these  attempts  failed  after  a  brief  trial,  as  his  critics 
predicted  would  be  the  case,  but  not  for  the  reasons  on 
which  the  predictions  were  based.  The  causes  of  the 
failure  were  elements  that  might  have  been  and  should 
have  been  excluded  from  the  problem. 

In  spite  of  his  business  experience,  Owen  was  not  the 
man  to  conduct  such  enterprises  to  success.  His  ex- 
perience had  been  that  of  a  manufacturer ;  he  knew  little 
of  trade  or  agriculture,  less  of  banking  and  general  busi- 
ness. He  should  have  associated  with  himself  one  or 
more  men  of  experience  in  those  affairs  of  which  he  knew 
little.  He  was  not  skilled  in  judging  men ;  he  was  too 
sanguine,  too  quixotic,  too  visionary.  His  philosophy  of 
determinism  had  bred  in  him  a  faith  in  the  essential  good- 
ness of  human  nature  that  would  not  permit  him  to  see 
facts  patent  to  every  ordinary  observer.  No  groups  of 
perfectly  rational  and  unselfish  men  can  be  created  by 
magic  out  of  vagrant  adventurers  and  cranky  enthusiasts, 
nor  even  out  of  the  average  stolid  British  worker.  Every 
project  of  Owen's  proved  a  magnet  to  draw  to  it  precisely 
the  men  that  would  insure  its  failure  :  the  over-sanguine, 
quick  to  be  discouraged  when  their  roseate  fancies  were 
not  immediately  realized ;  the  odd  and  cranky,  who  will 
not  fit  into  any  scheme,  and  are  everywhere  a  source  of 
o 


194  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

discord;  the  self-willed  and  ambitious,  who  cannot  be 
controlled  and  are  incompetent  to  lead;  the  waifs  and 
strays,  men  whose  only  title  to  success  in  a  new  venture 
was  that  they  had  failed  in  everything  they  had  yet 
undertaken. 

Owen's  postulate  that  man  is  good  by  nature,  and  only 
made  bad  by  bad  surroundings;  that  if  these  were  re- 
moved, man's  primitive  goodness  will  assert  itself,  —  was 
not  in  the  long  run  borne  out  by  the  facts.  New  sur- 
roundings proved  in  numerous  cases  to  be  nothing  more 
than  a  fertile  soil  in  which  primitive  badness  made  a 
flourishing  growth.  His  other  postulate,  that  it  is  only 
necessary  to  make  clear  to  men  the  beauty  and  benefits 
of  the  sociahstic  order  to  secure  its  immediate  adoption, 
also  failed  to  justify  itself  in  working.  Like  many  other 
reformers,  Owen  did  not  take  into  the  account  that  men 
might  not  care  for  a  new  order.  He  did  not  see  that  an 
existing  society  exists  because  it  is  still  satisfactory  to  the 
class  who  have  the  power  to  maintain  it.  It  is  not  ig- 
norance of  the  good  that  preserves  unjust  institutions, 
so  much  as  self-interest.  The  ruling  class  finds  its  profit 
in  abuses,  and  reforms  can  be  wrung  from  it  only  by  force, 
actual  or  potential. 

Owen  also  failed  to  see  that  social  ideals  are  merely 
Utopian,  unless  they  arise  out  of  actual  economic  con- 
ditions and  contemplate  demonstrable  economic  possi- 
bilities —  otherwise  they  lack  reality  and  can  never 
emerge  from  the  realm  of  the  ideal.  His  colonies  sought 
industrial  freedom  amid  competitive  conditions,  there- 
fore not  failure  but  success  would  have  been  the  surprising 
thing.  Moreover,  his  enterprises  were  attempted  with 
inadequate  capital,  —  or,  rather,  they  were  attempted  on 


SOCIALISM   IN  ENGLAND  195 

a  scale  too  large  for  the  available  capital.  Cooperative 
enterprises  that  have  succeeded  have  begun  in  a  small 
way,  proportioned  to  the  means  of  their  founders,  and 
have  enlarged  by  degrees.  That  the  projects  of  Owen 
were  not  inherently  absurd  and  impossible  is  shown  by 
later  successes  on  the  same  principles;  his  experiments 
were  wrecked  on  obstacles  that  better  directed  enter- 
prises avoided.  He  discovered  that  it  is  not  enough  to 
devise  social  machinery ;  social  man  is  needed  to  work  it ; 
and  social  man  cannot  be  made  out  of  hand,  —  he  must 
be  slowly  developed. 

Owen's  significance  in  the  history  of  SociaHsm  is  mainly 
as  a  propagator  of  ideas.  Even  in  this,  his  service  was 
often  of  doubtful  value,  for  his  frankness  and  benevolence 
won  for  many  of  his  ideas  a  respect  that  their  intrinsic 
quality  did  not  deserve.  On  the  other  hand,  some  of  his 
later  vagaries  cast  a  reproach  equally  undeserved  on  his 
socialistic  theories.  When  he  was  past  eighty  he  fell  under 
the  influence  of  certain  persons,  it  matters  not  whether 
dupes  or  impostors,  who  made  of  him  an  ardent  believer  in 
spiritualism.  His  lax  views  on  marriage  also  did  not  com- 
mend his  Socialism  to  Britons  of  any  class.  It  is  hardly 
possible  to  regard  his  career  as  other  than  a  failure,  in 
spite  of  his  excellent  intentions,  his  considerable  abilities, 
and  the  correctness  of  some  of  his  social  theories. 

Ill 

The  Reform  bill  of  1832  was  thought  by  Macaulay  and 
the  Liberal  statesmen  of  his  generation  to  be  the  proper 
sequel  to  the  Revolution  of  1688;  on  the  ground  that, 
while  the  Revolution  had  brought  the  Crown  into  har- 
mony with  Parliament,  the  bill  had  been  necessary  to 


196  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

bring  Parliament  into  harmony  with  the  nation.  But 
this  harmony  soon  proved  illusory.  The  Reform  bill 
did  away  with  some  of  the  most  anomalous  features  of 
the  English  political  system.  "Three  niches  in  a  stone 
wall"  no  longer  sent  two  representatives  to  the  House 
of  Commons,  but  as  a  £10  quahfication  was  still  required 
of  voters  in  boroughs,  and  for  the  county  franchise  a  man 
must  be  a  leaseholder  or  copyholder,  it  is  obvious  that 
only  the  middle  class  was  benefited.  The  shopkeeper  and 
the  manufacturer  had  now  their  political  rights,  but  the 
artisan  and  the  laborer  were  no  better  off  than  before. 
What  gave  additional  edge  to  their  disappointment  and 
exasperation  was  that  the  middle  class  had  used  the  dis- 
content of  the  working  people  as  a  means  of  exacting  the 
concessions  obtained,  only  to  cease  all  effort  as  soon  as 
their  own  grievance  was  redressed.  Poor  harvests  and 
commercial  depression  combined  to  m.ake  the  lot  of  the 
workers  more  grievous ;  and  the  operation  of  the  new 
Poor  Law  of  1835  was  deeply  resented,  especially  in  the 
rural  districts.  Instead  of  a  cessation  of  the  social  unrest 
and  political  agitation  on  the  passage  of  the  Reform  bill, 
as  had  been  confidently  predicted  by  its  advocates,  there 
seemed  to  be  even  greater  dissatisfaction  after  "reform" 
than  before,  and  a  prospect  that  the  agitation  would  be 
interminable. 

The  reign  of  Queen  Victoria  opened  among  such  un- 
promising conditions,  and  a  few  weeks  before  her  corona- 
tion a  great  radical  meeting  was  held  at  Birmingham,  at 
which  a  petition  was  adopted  for  presentation  to  Parlia- 
ment, that  afterwards  became  known  as  the  Charter, 
while  the  party  that  advocated  it  were  called  Chartists. 
These  demands,  the  people's  charter  of  liberties,  as  they 


SOCIALISM   IN  ENGLAND  1 97 

were  then  deemed,  do  not  seem  in  the  least  radical  now. 
Briefly  summarized,  the  things  demanded  were  six : 
(i)  Universal  suffrage  (by  which  was  really  meant  man- 
hood suffrage) ;  (2)  equal  electoral  districts ;  (3)  vote 
by  ballot ;  (4)  annual  Parliaments ;  (5)  no  qualification 
for  a  seat  in  Parliament  but  choice  by  electors ;  (6)  pay- 
ment of  members  of  Parliament.  All  of  these  were  cer- 
tainly fair  matters  of  debate,  reforms  that  might  reason- 
ably be  asked  and  advocated  by  peaceful  means,  as  is 
attested  by  the  fact  that  all  but  the  second  and  sixth  of 
these  demands  have  been  conceded,  or  substantially  so, 
and  the  sixth  has  been  promised  by  a  Liberal  ministry. 
Yet  in  the  thirties  a  storm  of  objection  and  protest  and 
criticism  was  poured  out  on  the  advocates  of  these  re- 
forms, as  if  they  were  threatening  to  lay  the  British  con- 
stitution in  ruins  and  undermine  the  very  foundations 
of  society. 

But  if  the  opposition  to  Chartism  was  unreasonable, 
it  must  be  confessed  that  its  advocacy  was  equally  with- 
out reason.  More  was  hoped  and  expected  from  these 
political  changes  than  they  were  in  any  way  fitted  to 
bestow.  Now  that  they  have  been  mainly  granted, 
the  condition  of  the  poor  of  England  is  little  improved, 
and  whatever  improvement  there  may  be  is  certainly 
to  be  ascribed  to  some  other  source.  But  the  most  ex- 
travagant claims  were  put  forth:  "The  Charter  means 
a  good  home,  good  food,  prosperity,  and  shorter  working 
hours."  How  it  could  have  been  rationally  expected  to 
give  all,  or  any,  of  these  things  passes  comprehension. 
Misled  by  these  social  expectations,  more  than  attracted 
by  the  political  features  of  the  movement,  the  working- 
men  took  part  almost  as  one  man  in  the  agitation  for  the 


198  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

proposed  reforms.  Immense  meetings  were  held  to  ad- 
vocate the  Charter,  at  some  of  which  a  hundred  thousand 
people  are  said  to  have  been  present.  In  1839  the  House 
of  Commons  refused  even  to  receive  a  petition  in  favor 
of  the  Charter,  and  this  denial  of  a  fundamental  right 
produced  many  riots  in  different  parts  of  the  kingdom. 
There  was  a  serious  prospect  at  one  time  of  a  general  up- 
rising of  the  working-class,  in  which  event  much  blood- 
shed and  suffering  could  not  have  been  averted.  The 
government  acted  with  great  firmness  and  energy,  rather 
than  with  wisdom.  The  meetings  of  Chartists  were 
forbidden ;  those  held  were  broken  up  ;  leaders  of  riotous 
demonstrations  were  prosecuted,  convicted,  and  by  hun- 
dreds either  imprisoned  or  transported.  The  agitation 
rapidly  declined,  leaving  the  working-classes  greatly  em- 
bittered against  those  who  had  shown  that  they  still 
possessed  the  power  of  the  State,  and  meant  to  use  it 
whenever  necessary  to  maintain  their  supremacy. 

One  of  those  who  had  a  deep  sympathy  with  the  wrongs 
of  the  working-men,  and  wished  to  see  them  righted,  was 
Thomas  Carlyle.  If  his  knowledge  of  social  forces  had 
been  equal  to  his  hatred  of  all  injustice  and  oppression, 
he  might  have  spoken  a  prophet's  word  to  his  England. 
The  best  word  that  he  could  speak  was  his  "Past  and 
Present,"  an  eloquent  and  stimulating  book  in  many 
ways,  but  utterly  inapplicable  to  the  social  conditions, 
and,  considered  as  a  proposed  solution  of  England's 
troubles,  supremely  ridiculous.  For  the  remedy  that 
Carlyle,  in  good  faith,  proposed  for  the  ills  under  which 
nineteenth-century  England  was  groaning  was  —  a  re- 
turn to  the  England  of  Henry  II !  He  might  as  reason- 
ably have  proposed  a  return  to  the  stone  age. 


SOCIALISM  IN  ENGLAND  I99 

Another  solution  offered  was  less  irrational,  but  hardly 
more  practical.  It  was  known  as  Christian  Socialism, 
and  its  origin  is  generally  ascribed  to  Frederick  Denison 
Maurice,  though  Charles  Kingsley  did  more  than  any 
other  to  popularize  its  principles.  Maurice  established 
the  Christian  Socialist  in  1848,  as  the  organ  of  the  move- 
ment, which,  according  to  its  founder,  opposed  equally 
"the  unsocial  Christians  and  the  unchristian  socialists." 
The  Christian  socialists  avowed  no  definite  social  scheme, 
but  were  deeply  impressed  by  the  brutality  of  the  doc- 
trines taught  by  the  English  economists.  Kingsley  had 
no  words  adequately  to  express  his  scorn  of  the  "narrow, 
conceited,  hypocritical,  anarchic,  and  atheistic  scheme 
of  the  universe"  that  lay,  as  he  thought,  at  the  base  of 
the  accepted  political  economy  of  his  day.  "We  be- 
lieved," wrote  Maurice  afterwards,  in  explanation  of  the 
motives  of  the  group,  "that  Christianity  has  the  power 
of  regenerating  whatever  it  comes  in  contact  with,  of 
making  that  morally  healthful  and  vigorous  which  apart 
from  it  must  be  either  mischievous  or  inefficient.  We 
found,  from  what  we  know  of  the  working-men  of  England, 
that  the  conviction  was  spreading  more  and  more  widely 
among  them,  that  Law  and  Christianity  were  merely 
the  supports  and  agents  of  capital.  We  wished  to  show 
them  both  by  words  and  deeds  that 'Law  and  Christianity 
are  the  only  protectors  of  all  classes  from  the  selfishness 
which  is  the  destruction  of  all."  ^ 

Christian  Socialism,  therefore,  as  its  chief  advocates 
understood  it,  was  the  belief  that  the  Church  is  intended 
to  be  an  organization  for  the  promotion  of  social  right- 

'  "Life  of  Frederick  Denison  Maurice,"  2  vols.  New  York,  1884, 
TT:   92. 


200  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

eousness ;  and  that  when  this  fact  is  duly  recognized,  the 
production  and  distribution  of  wealth  in  Christian  coun- 
tries will  proceed  on  wholly  different  lines  from  those  at 
present  obtaining.  A  series  of  tracts  was  published,  in 
which  the  principles  of  the  movement  were  set  forth,  and 
a  league  was  formed  to  promote  cooperative  societies.  In 
this  latter  direction,  it  does  not  appear  that  the  leaders 
ever  succeeded  in  accomplishing  results  worth  while. 
As  they  were  not  men  of  business  training,  but  men  of 
books,  and  did  not  attract  to  themselves  as  co-laborers 
any  notable  laymen,  their  lack  of  practical  success  is  not 
wonderful  and  should  not  be  charged  against  them. 
They  did  the  one  thing  for  which  they  were  fitted:  a 
work  of  education,  the  propagation  of  ideas.  Their 
chief  desire  seems  to  have  been  the  socialization  of  in- 
dustry ;  they  do  not  seem  to  have  thought  necessary  the 
sociaHzation  of  land.  In  short,  they  had  learned  their 
Socialism,  no^from  economists,  but  from  Jesus.  Their 
text-book  was  not  Das  Kapital,  but  the  New  Testament. 
The  most  effective  literary  expression  was  given  to  these 
ideas  in  the  writings  of  Charles  Kingsley,  especially  in 
"Alton  Locke"  (1850)  and  "Yeast"  (1851).  He  ad- 
vocated the  duty  of  the  Church  to  improve  the  condition 
of  the  working-classes,  as  one  of  its  chief  functions ;  the 
Church  should  aid  the  people  in  bettering  their  material 
position,  as  well  as  teach  them  rehgion.  That  the  people 
were  capable  of  elevation,  which  many  then  denied,  he 
strenuously  maintained.  "I  believe,"  he  said  in  his 
preface  to  "Alton  Locke,"  "that  a  man  might  be,  as  a 
tailor  or  a  costermonger,  every  inch  of  him  a  saint  and  a 
scholar  and  a  gentleman,  for  I  have  seen  some  such  al- 
ready."    He  scouted  the  postulates  of  political  economy : 


SOCIALISM  IN  ENGLAND  20I 

"It  is  my  belief  that  not  self-interest  but  self-sacrifice  is 
the  only  law  upon  which  human  society  can  be  grounded 
with  any  hope  of  prosperity  or  permanence."  He  was 
a  strong  advocate  of  cooperative  association,  and  differed 
from  those  socialists  who  looked  to  the  State  for  regenera- 
tion of  the  social  order.  Maurice  thought  that  the  State 
was  "by  nature  and  law  conservative  of  individual  rights 
and  individual  possessions,"  while  the  Church  is  com- 
munistic in  principle.  In  the  union  of  Church  and  State 
he  therefore  saw  the  fusion  of  the  principles  of  communism 
and  property.  Kingsley  had  more  sympathy  with  the 
political  agitation  then  prevalent  than  Maurice ;  he  was 
so  far  a  Chartist  that  he  approved  all  the  demands  of  the 
Charter.  But  Kingsley  was  clear  that  legislative  reform 
was  not  social  reform,  and  that  neither  the  hearts  nor 
the  social  institutions  of  men  are  to  be  reconstructed  by 
act  of  Parliament.  If  the  Chartists  ascribed  too  much 
importance  to  political  reform,  the  Christian  socialists 
as  clearly  underestimated  its  value.  The  Chartists  were 
justified  in  making  their  appeal  for  manhood  suffrage  and 
the  ballot,  without  which  as  its  weapons  democracy  can 
make  no  progress  save  by  a  bloody  revolution. 

Both  Chartism  and  Christian  Sociahsm  disappeared  ^ 
for  more  than  a  generation,  and  for  substantially  the 
same  reason  in  both  cases :  they  appealed  to  a  people 
unorganized,  and  at  that  time  incapable  of  being  effec- 
tively organized.  But  Christian  Socialism,  before  its 
disappearance,  accomplished  one  thing  of  no  small  im- 

*  An  existing  Christian  Socialist  League,  composed  of  clergy  and  lay- 
men of  the  Church  of  England,  may  be  reckoned  a  belated  survival  of 
the  earlier  movement,  though  it  seems  to  be  really  independent  in  origin. 
This  League  is  distinctly  a  High  Church  affair,  while  the  original  Chris- 
tian socialists  were  of  the  Broad  Church  Party. 


202  SOCIALISM  AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

portance  :  it  destroyed  in  England  that  hostility  between 
advanced  political  and  social  ideas  and  established  re- 
ligion, which  has  prevailed  on  the  Continent  between 
Socialism  and  Christianity,  to  the  mutual  injury  of  both. 
Maurice  and  Kingsley  introduced  socialistic  ideas  among 
a  wide  circle  of  Christians,  both  clergy  and  laity,  who 
but  for  them  would  never  have  listened  to  the  new 
theories. 

IV 

The  Manchester  school  of  economists  concerned  them- 
selves almost  wholly  with  the  production  of  wealth ;  it 
seemed  to  them  that  distribution  would  take  place,  in  an 
almost  automatic  manner,  under  the  system  of  compe- 
tition, and  that  the  final  result  would  be  substantially 
just.  Whatever  incidental  injustice  might  occur  would 
be  more  likely  to  be  aggravated  than  redressed  by  any 
governmental  interference.  And  they  were  right  in  part. 
Experience  showed  that  distribution  was  automatically 
effected  —  in  the  same  way  that  an  automatic  distribu- 
tion of  swill  is  made  in  a  hog-pen :  the  strongest  hogs 
get  what  they  want  first,  and  the  others  get  what  may 
happen  to  be  left.  And  that  system  of  distribution  of 
wealth  might  be  satisfactory  in  a  social  order,  if  men  were 
no  higher  in  the  scale  of  being  than  hogs,  if  they  had  no 
instincts  that  demand  protection  of  the  weak  against 
the  strong  and  equal  justice  for  all. 

But  since  men  have  such  instincts,  they  are  not  satis- 
fied with  the  methods  of  the  hog-pen ;  they  have  come 
to  see  that  the  chief  economic  questions  are  questions  of 
distribution  —  that  to  get  wealth  is  less  important  than 
how  to  spend  it.     And  to  the  solution  of  this  problem  the 


SOCIALISM  IN  ENGLAND  203 

Manchester  school  could  offer  nothing  better  than  the 
reiteration  of  their  great  maxim,  laissez  /aire  —  let  men 
continue  to  live  as  if  they  were  hogs.  But  men  were  be- 
coming impatient  of  this  formula ;  they  were  clearly  per- 
ceiving the  truth  that  Matthew  Arnold  uttered  a  little 
later:  "Our  inequality  materializes  our  upper  class, 
vulgarizes  our  middle  class,  brutalizes  our  lower  class." 
They  were  revolted  by  a  civilization  that  could  show  as 
its  type  and  symptom  a  London,  with  its  Mayfair  at 
one  end  and  its  \Vhitechapel  at  the  other. 

In  the  sixties  a  voice  was  lifted  against  the  hog-pen 
theory ;  a  single  voice,  but  one  to  which  multitudes  had 
become  accustomed  to  listen  :  the  voice  of  John  Ruskin. 
It  was  not  as  an  authority  on  social  topics,  however,  that 
Englishmen  had  become  wonted  to  listen  to  Ruskin ;  he 
was  a  writer  and  lecturer  on  art,  of  the  first  authority, 
but  was  supposed  to  understand  little  else.  The  time 
may  come  again  when,  if  men  continue  to  read  Ruskin 
at  all,  they  will  read  him  chiefly  as  the  expounder  of  art. 
But  to  his  own  generation,  and  to  several  generations 
following,  his  greatest  service  was  and  will  be  that  of 
prophet  and  preacher.  He  had  discovered  in  his  study 
of  art,  that  pictures  and  statues  and  music  and  other 
beautiful  things,  could  not  be  understood  apart  from  the 
social  conditions  out  of  which  they  sprang  —  that  the 
production  and  distribution  of  works  of  art  bore  an  inti- 
mate relation  to  the  production  and  consumption  of  com- 
modities in  general.  Not  only  the  production,  but  the 
appreciation,  of  art,  he  discovered,  is  profoundly  affected 
by  social  conditions.  The  quality  of  a  people's  life  is 
reflected  in  its  art ;  hence  a  noble  art  can  proceed  only 
from  a  people  that  are  living  a  free,  rich,  and  noble  life. 


204  SOCIALISM  AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

Rusldn  was  thus  led  to  study  economic  phenomena, 
the  production  and  distribution  of  wealth,  as  social  forces. 
He  was  chiefly  interested  in  the  bearing  of  these  forces  on 
human  life  and  character.  It  was  borne  in  upon  him 
that  the  making  of  human  souls  is  the  most  important 
manufacture  in  which  a  nation's  energies  can  be  engaged, 
and  he  was  not  greatly  pleased  as  he  contemplated  the 
quality  of  souls  that  the  England  of  his  day  was  making. 
He  hoped  to  rouse  her  to  her  failure  and  lead  her  to  change 
her  ways.  "In  some  far-away  and  yet  undreamt-of 
hour,"  he  said,  "I  can  even  imagine  that  England  may 
cast  all  thoughts  of  possessive  wealth  back  to  the  bar- 
baric nations  among  whom  they  first  arose ;  and  that, 
while  the  sands  of  the  Indus  and  the  adamant  of  Golconda 
may  yet  stiffen  the  housings  of  the  charger,  and  flash 
from  the  turban  of  the  slave,  she,  as  a  Christian  mother, 
may  at  last  attain  to  the  virtue  of  a  Heathen  one  and  be 
able  to  lead  forth  her  Sons,  saying,  'These  are  My 
Jewels.'" 

Ruskin  was  flouted  and  scorned  by  nearly  his  entire 
generation  for  maintaining  that  England's  output  of  men 
was  of  greater  importance  than  her  output  of  iron  and 
cotton.  The  four  Essays  that  were  printed  in  a  small 
volume,  with  the  title  "Unto  this  Last,"  were  first  pub- 
lished in  the  Cornhill  Magazine,  of  which  Thackeray 
was  then  the  editor.  They  provoked  such  a  growing 
storm  of  criticism  and  protest  that  Thackeray  quailed, 
and,  though  a  personal  friend  of  the  author,  notified 
Ruskin  that  he  could  print  no  more.  If  there  was  any- 
thing on  which  educated  Englishmen  were  then  agreed, 
it  was  that  Ruskin  knew  nothing  of  political  economy, 
that  these  writings  were  unworthy  of  his  fame  and  un- 


SOCIALISM  IN   ENGLAND  205 

worthy  of  serious  attention.  Yet  "Unto  this  Last"  was 
one  of  the  most  valuable  contributions  ever  made  to  the 
fundamental  principles  of  economic  and  social  science, 
and  has  done  more  to  mould  the  opinions  and  character 
of  readers  by  the  thousand  than  any  other  book  of  its 
century. 

The  old  economy  of  the  Manchester  school  had  taken 
as  the  foundation  of  its  science  human  nature  at  its  worst. 
Ruskin  persisted  in  taking  as  the  foundation  of  economics 
and  sociology  man  at  his  best.  Manchester  stoutly 
maintained  that  man  may  always  be  trusted  to  be  a  self- 
ish beast ;  Ruskin,  den}dng  neither  the  beast  nor  the 
selfishness,  insisted  that  this  is  not  the  whole  truth  about 
man,  not  even  the  most  significant  truth  ;  that  man  has 
also  capacity  for  love  and  kindness  and  self-sacrifice  is 
the  most  deeply  significant  fact  about  him.  A  science 
of  economics  founded  wholly  on  man's  bestial  selfishness, 
and  taking  no  account  of  his  godlike  qualities,  ignoring 
his  capacity  to  give  his  life  for  ideals  of  truth  and  good- 
ness, is  well  named  the  "dismal  science."  But  it  ought 
also  to  be  called  the  lying,  slanderous  science. 

The  old  economy  recognized  consumption  as  the  end 
of  production.  True,  says  Ruskin,  but  why  stop  there  ? 
Life  is  the  end  and  aim  of  consumption.  From  this  fol- 
lows what  he  held  to  be  the  cardinal  principle  of  econom- 
ics :  "There  is  no  wealth  but  life  —  fife,  including  all  its 
powers  of  love,  of  joy,  of  admiration.  That  country  is 
richest  which  nourishes  the  greatest  number  of  noble  and 
happy  human  beings ;  that  man  is  richest,  who,  having 
perfected  the  functions  of  his  own  life  to  the  utmost,  has 
also  the  widest  helpful  influence,  both  personal,  and  by 
means  of  his  possessions,  over  the  lives  of  others."    In 


2o6  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

other  words,  economics  being  concerned  with  man  and 
his  conduct  must  be  an  ethical  science,  and  cannot  be 
investigated  as  if  it  had  to  do  only  with  the  interplay  of 
unmoral  forces. 

Lest  men  should  object  that  his  treatment  of  the  subject 
was  a  mere  prophetic  rhapsody,  and  no  guide  to  practical 
action,  Ruskin  was  ready  with  a  programme  for  the  par- 
tial realization  of  the  ideal  of  society  that  he  so  eloquently 
described.  He  urged  four  lines  of  social  activity  and  re- 
form, as  a  beginning  :  first,  government  training-schools, 
in  which  children  should  be  taught  the  laws  of  health, 
habits  of  gentleness  and  justice,  and  the  calling  by  which 
they  were  to  live;  secondly,  state  manufactories  and 
workshops  in  connection  with  these  schools,  for  the  pro- 
duction of  every  necessary  of  life  and  the  exercise  of 
every  useful  art  —  interfering  with  no  private  enterprise, 
but  producing  good  and  exemplary  work ;  thirdly,  that 
in  these  industries  employment  should  be  furnished  for 
all  out  of  work ;  ^  fourthly,  that  for  the  old  and  destitute, 
comfort  and  home  should  be  provided,  not  as  a  charity, 
but  as  justice.  "A  laborer,"  he  said,  "serves  his  country 
with  his  spade,  just  as  a  man  in  the  middle  ranks  of  life 
serves  it  with  sword,  pen,  or  lancet.  If  the  service  be 
less,  and,  therefore,  the  wages  during  health  less,  then 
the  reward  when  health  is  broken  may  be  less,  but  not 

1  To  the  objection  always  made  by  the  "practical"  man  to  proposals 
of  this  sort :  How  could  the  expenses  of  such  schools  and  manufactories 
be  met  ?  Ruskin  had  a  reply  that  was  not  only  ready  but  conclusive : 
"  Indirectly  they  would  be  far  more  than  self-supporting.  The  economy 
in  crime  alone  (quite  one  of  the  most  costly  articles  of  luxury  in  the  mod- 
ern European  market)  which  such  schools  would  induce,  would  suffice 
to  support  them  ten  times  over.  Their  economy  of  labor  would  be  pure 
gain,  and  that  too  large  to  be  presently  calculable." 


SOCIALISM   IN   ENGLAND  207 

less  honorable ;  and  it  ought  to  be  quite  as  natural  and 
straightforward  a  matter  for  a  laborer  to  take  his  pension 
from  his  parish,  as  for  a  man  in  higher  rank  to  take  his 
pension  from  his  country." 

Ruskin  did  not  call  his  doctrine  Socialism,  nor  did  he 
call  himself  a  socialist,  nor  were  these  terms  then  appUed 
by  others ;  but  it  will  be  seen  that  he  anticipated  many 
of  the  principles  and  most  of  the  practical  programme  of 
modern  Socialism.  To  his  work  as  a  sower  of  seed  is  to  be 
attributed  much  of  the  harvest  of  Sociahsm  in  the  Eng- 
land of  a  generation  later. 

Nor  was  his  teaching  entirely  a  propaganda ;  it  bore 
practical  fruit  through  the  labors  of  a  disciple,  Arnold 
Toynbee,  a  graduate  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  in  1878, 
and  thereafter  a  lecturer  on  economics  in  that  institu- 
tion, until  his  untimely  death  in  1883.  He  was  the  in- 
spirer  in  turn  of  a  knot  of  young  men  who  gathered  around 
him,  spoke  on  industrial  questions  in  many  of  the  manu- 
facturing towns  of  England,  and  spent  some  of  his  ''long" 
vacations  among  the  poor  of  East  London.  After  his 
death,  Canon  Barnett,  rector  of  the  parish  of  St.  Jude's, 
in  that  part  of  London,  suggested  the  establishment  of  a 
kind  of  "Hall,"  in  which  men  might  reside  and  do  a  like 
work  for  the  Whitechapel  poor.  The  result  was  the  erec- 
tion of  such  a  building,  called  Toynbee  Hall,  in  memory 
of  the  pioneer,  which  was  opened  in  1885.  This  was  the 
first  example  of  University  Settlement  work,  which  has 
since  that  time  been  greatly  extended  in  England  and 
America,  and  widened  out  into  Social  Settlements  that 
have  had  a  most  beneficent  effect,  in  spite  of  some  short- 
comings and  follies. 

Settlement  work  depends  for  its  efl5ciency  on  the  prin- 


208  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

ciple  that  education  is  mainly  a  matter  of  personal  con- 
tact, of  arousing  enthusiasm  and  imparting  ideals,  not 
of  merely  conveying  knowledge  from  mind  to  mind.  And 
successful  settlement  work  is  that  which  has  recognized 
that  education,  in  this  sense,  is  what  the  poor  need  most 
of  all  for  any  permanent  improvement  in  their  condition. 
Next  to  this,  the  value  of  settlement  work  lies  in  the 
discovery  and  dissemination  of  social  facts.  For  the 
most  dangerous  element  in  social  reform  is  sentimental- 
ism,  mere  uninstructed  emotionalism.  One  remembers 
the  Hatter's  watch,  in  "Alice  in  Wonderland."  "I  told 
you  butter  wouldn't  suit  the  works,"  he  said  angrily 
to  the  March  Hare.  "  It  was  the  best  butter,"  the  March 
Hare  meekly  replied.  The  surprise  of  well-meaning 
people  at  the  failure  of  their  good  intentions  and  best 
efforts  at  social  amelioration  is  often  equally  humorous, 
but  it  is  pathetic  also.  A  little  intelligence  must  be 
mingled  with  good  intentions  to  make  them  anything  else 
than  harmful. 


"We  are  all  sociaHsts  now,"  is  a  remark  made  with  in- 
creasing frequency  since  it  was  first  jocularly  uttered  by 
Sir  William  Vernon  Harcourt  twenty  years  ago.  Even 
when  seriously  spoken,  the  words  express  barely  a  half- 
truth.  Many  people  are  doubtless  more  hospitable  than 
formerly  to  the  notion  of  some  halting  steps  in  the  direc- 
tion of  Socialism,  but  they  still  recoil  from  the  thought 
of  real  Socialism.  Such  acceptance  as  socialistic  ideas 
have  to-day  in  England  is  mainly  due  to  the  rise  of  a  new 
school  in  the  eighties.  The  publication  of  Das  Kapital 
produced  surprisingly  little  effect  on  English  thought; 


SOCIALISM   IN   ENGLAND  209 

its  author  might  as  well  have  resided  in  Mars  as  in  London 
while  writing  the  book.  Few  Englishmen  read  it,  fewer 
understood  it,  and  of  these  latter  only  here  and  there  one 
was  receptive. 

Nevertheless,  Marx  did  make  a  few  ardent  disciples, 
and  in  1883  they  formed  the  Social  Democratic  Federa- 
tion. As  one  of  their  own  votaries  put  it :  "The  social- 
ists of  the  eighties  came  into  the  English  world  with  a 
doctrine  of  cooperation  and  fellowship  of  which  the  na- 
tion stood  in  sore  need,  and  a  set  of  Marxian  formularies 
which  it  would  not  have  at  any  price."  A  prominent  mem- 
ber of  this  group  was  William  Morris,  who  had  first  won 
distinction  as  a  poet,  and  later  as  an  artist-decorator. 
Neither  by  temperament  nor  by  education  a  philosopher 
or  a  politician,  as  a  socialist  he  was  not  a  doctrinaire. 
It  became  clear  to  him  that  if  Socialism  was  to  make  prog- 
ress in  England,  it  must  be  delivered  from  the  domina- 
tion of  Marx  and  his  dogmatic  trinity :  the  theory  of 
value,  the  class  war,  and  the  catastrophic  revolution. 
The  first  is  unscientific,  the  second  is  immoral,  and  the 
third  has  been  abandoned  by  his  disciples.  With  some 
others  Morris  seceded  from  the  Federation  in  1885,  and 
founded  the  Socialist  League  on  broader  principles.  His 
own  "News  from  Nowhere"  was  one  of  the  most  efi'ective 
books  ever  written  in  advocacy  of  Socialism,  and  the 
Commonweal  proved  to  be  one  of  the  best  socialist  weekly 
papers  ever  established. 

Though  less  narrowly  dogmatic  than  the  Federation, 
the  League  is  no  less  radical.  It  avows  as  an  immediate 
practical  programme,  "stepping-stones  to  a  happier  pe- 
riod," the  following  measures :  compulsory  construction 
of  laborers'  dwellings,  to  be  let  at  cost ;  free  compulsory 


2IO  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

education,  with  at  least  one  meal  a  day ;  eight  hours  or 
less  for  a  normal  day's  work ;  a  cumulative  income  tax ; 
state  appropriation  of  railways  ;  national  banks  ;  rapid 
extinction  [repudiation  ?]  of  national  debt ;  nationalization 
of  land.  A  colleague  of  Morris  in  the  League  was  Ernest 
Belfort  Bax,  a  barrister  of  the  Middle  Temple,  educated 
in  large  part  in  Germany,  a  valuable  assistant  in  the  con- 
duct of  the  Commonweal  and  author  of  numerous  books 
on  the  history  and  doctrines  of  Socialism.  Since  the 
death  of  Morris  he  has  returned  to  his  earlier  allegiance, 
and  is  now  active  in  the  Social  Democratic  Federation. 

One  of  the  leading  spirits  in  the  Federation  from  the 
first  has  been  H.  M.  Hyndman,  a  graduate  of  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  and  for  years  a  brilliant  journalist 
before  avowing  socialist  principles.  He  is  probably  the 
best-equipped  writer  among  the  English  socialists,  and 
his  books  are  said  to  have  made  a  profound  and  wide 
impression  in  his  own  country,  but  are  little  known  in 
America.  Another  influential  writer  is  Robert  Blatch- 
ford,  a  self-educated  man,  the  only  one  among  the  Hterary 
group  of  Enghsh  socialists  who  is  truly  a  man  of  the  people 
and  has  worked  with  his  hands.  The  others  are  what  are 
called  on  the  Continent  "the  intellectuals,"  and  cannot 
know  the  people  as  one  of  themselves  knows  them.  The 
Clarion,  a  newspaper  established  by  Mr.  Blatchford 
in  1 891,  has  been  very  successful  and  has  the  largest  cir- 
culation and  greatest  influence  of  any  socialist  pubUca- 
tion  in  England,  by  no  means  excepting  Justice,  the  offi- 
cial organ  of  the  Federation.  While  men  like  Morris, 
Bax,  and  Hyndman  were  men  of  education  and  literary 
standing,  and  were  read  quite  widely  by  educated  English- 
men, making  a  considerable  impression  on  men  of  wealth 


SOCIALISM  IN  ENGLAND  211 

and  social  position,  they  did  not  touch  the  working-men. 
But  these  are  the  precise  audience  to  which  Blatchford 
addressed  himself,  and  not  in  vain. 

The  Social  Democratic  Federation  has  remained 
strongly  Marxian,  although  an  admiring  friend  and 
biographer  of  ]Mr.  Blatchford  says  that  the  Clarion  man 
has  never  read  Das  Kapital  and  knows  nothing  of  Marx 
at  first  hand.  The  Federation  has  also  been  emphatically 
antichristian  in  its  spirit,  and  in  much  of  its  literature. 
Some  of  Blatchford's  writings,  and  possibly  some  of 
Hyndman's  also,  would  have  exposed  their  author  to  a 
prosecution  for  blasphemy  a  few  years  ago,  —  in  1841 
George  Jacob  Holyoake  was  convicted  and  imprisoned 
for  six  months  for  an  offence  much  less  serious. 

Not  only  has  the  socialistic  movement  in  England  an- 
tagonized the  middle  classes  by  its  indifference  or  hos- 
tility to  religion,  but  some  of  its  leaders  have  increased 
this  odium  by  advocating  entire  freedom  of  divorce,  and 
the  confiscation  of  property  without  compensation. 
Another  of  their  leaders,  however,  Mr.  Bruce  Glazier, 
in  the  Labor  Leader,  in  answer  to  some  of  the  reproaches 
that  the  movement  has  had  to  endure  for  these  matters, 
which  are  no  essential  part  of  Socialism,  has  effectively 
retorted  on  the  middle  and  ruling  classes.  He  showed 
that  scores  of  English  Liberals  and  Tories  have  advocated 
the  loosest  of  sex-relationships,  and  illustrated  their 
theories  in  their  lives.  As  to  spoliation,  he  showed  how 
confiscation,  bribery,  and  corruption  have  built  up  the 
fortunes  of  half  the  English  peerage.  Even  as  to  athe- 
ism and  agnosticism  he  asserts,  without  contradiction, 
that  for  one  advocate  among  socialists  a  dozen  can  be 
produced  from  Liberals  and  Tories.     There  has  of  late 


212  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

been  a  marked  tendency  to  let  this  charge  against  Eng- 
lish Socialism  quietly  lapse  into  oblivion.  It  is  an  an- 
cient principle  of  law  that  one  who  seeks  relief  in  a  court 
of  equity  must  come  into  court  with  clean  hands. 

What  is  even  worse  in  the  eyes  of  some  Englishmen 
than  irreligion  is  that  members  of  the  Federation  have 
advocated,  in  their  list  of  immediate  reforms  demanded, 
the  abolition  of  the  Monarchy.  It  has  been  urged  that 
this  is  a  violation  of  the  Treason  Felony  Act  of  1848,  which 
makes  any  open  speaking  or  writing  with  the  object  of 
deposing  the  king  punishable  by  penal  servitude.  Pro- 
posing a  radical  change  in  the  form  of  government  may 
be  a  technical  violation  of  that  or  some  other  outworn 
statute  —  though  it  is  to  be  noted  that  deposing  the  king 
and  abolition  of  the  Monarchy  are  not  the  same  thing  — 
but  no  sensible  government  will  ever  elevate  socialist 
leaders  to  the  dignity  of  martyrdom  by  securing  their 
conviction  on  such  a  charge.  A  specimen  of  equal 
political  madness  is  the  suggestion  that  socialists  who 
circulate  their  literature  in  the  army  and  navy  should 
receive  condign  punishment  for  corrupting  the  services  !  ^ 
When  the  ruling  class  of  England  confesses  by  such  acts 
that  it  dare  not  permit  Socialism  to  be  freely  discussed, 
its  days  will  be  numbered. 

Another  influential  organization  is  the  Fabian  Society, 
formed  in  1884,  in  order  to  promote  the  education  of  the 
people  in  the  principles  of  Socialism.  Its  very  name  was 
a  protest  against  the  Marxian  doctrine  of  an  immediate 
and  catastrophic  revolution.     The  society  announces  as 

^  Both  of  these  specimens  of  political  wisdom  may  be  found  in  W.  Law- 
ler  Wilson's  "The  Menace  of  Socialism,"  New  York,  1909.  See  especially 
pp.  59,  60. 


SOCL\LISM  IN  ENGLAND  213 

its  object :  "the  reorganization  of  society  by  the  emanci- 
pation of  Land  and  Industrial  Capital  from  individual 
and  class  ownership  for  the  general  benefit."  This  should 
be  done  "without  compensation,  though  not  without 
such  relief  to  expropriated  individuals  as  may  seem  fit  to 
the  community."  The  members  of  the  Fabian  Society 
were  mostly  young  men,  clever,  possessing  considerable 
literary  ability,  and  full  of  initiative.  George  Bernard 
Shaw,  the  dramatist,  H.  G.  Wells,  the  ingenious  spinner 
of  more  or  less  scientific  romances,  the  Rev.  R.  J.  Camp- 
bell, the  famous  London  preacher,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Sidney 
Webb,  have  been  its  most  active  and  prominent  members. 
A  volume  of  "Fabian  Essays"  and  a  large  number  of 
penny  tracts  have  done  excellent  service  in  the  work  of 
educating  Enghshmen  in  the  principles  of  Socialism.  The 
Society  claims  a  membership  of  about  a  thousand,  and 
the  fact  that  eleven  Fabians  were  elected  to  Parliament 
in  1908  is  perhaps  a  good  measure  of  the  extent  of  their 
influence.  These  members  act  independently,  but  al- 
most invariably  vote  with  the  Labor  Party.  Though 
sneered  at  by  thoroughgoing  Marxians  as  advocates  of 
"socialism-and- water,"  hardly  deserving  the  name  of 
"comrades,"  the  Fabians  are  evidently  a  force  with  which 
both  socialists  and  antisocialists  must  reckon. 

The  formation  of  the  Independent  Labor  Party  at 
Bradford,  in  1883,  under  the  leadership  of  Keir  Hardie, 
was  the  most  important  event  in  the  progress  of  English 
Socialism.  Working-men  had  discovered  by  a  long  and 
costly  experience  that  they  gained  nothing  by  voting 
Tories  out  and  Liberals  in,  or  vice  versa.  Whether  a  man 
bore  one  party  label  or  another,  he  was  opposed  to  the 
interests  of  the  working-classes,  because  he  invariably 


214  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

belonged  to  another  class  and  had  other  interests.  The 
Labor  Party  was  in  no  way  hostile  to  the  other  organiza- 
tions engaged  in  propagating  socialistic  ideas ;  it  merely 
proposed  to  translate  some  of  the  ideas  into  political 
action.  It  was  all  very  well  to  promote  Socialism  by 
voice  and  pen,  but  why  neglect  its  promotion  by  the 
ballot  ?  was  its  query.  Mr.  Blatchford  and  his  Clarion 
gave  yeoman  service  from  the  first  in  the  cause  of  the 
Labor  Party. 

The  Independent  Labor  Party  has  been  vigorously 
pushed  by  the  Fabians  and  has  shared  the  moderation 
of  that  group  of  socialists.  It  has  explicitly  refused 
to  avow  the  Marxian  dogma  of  the  class  warfare.  It 
cannot  see  the  consistency  of  socialists  declaring  in  one 
breath  for  universal  brotherhood  and  for  a  relentless  war 
of  the  classes.  The  Marxians  are  determined  to  make  all 
men  brothers,  if  they  must  kill  off  half  the  race  to  do  it ! 
The  Stuttgart  Congress,  in  August,  1907,  undertook  to 
estabhsh  a  standard  of  orthodoxy,  and  declared  that  only 
those  who  avow  their  belief  in  the  class  struggle  are  en- 
titled to  bear  the  name  Socialist.  The  German  socialists, 
who  despise  Christianity,  are  not  above  taking  a  leaf  from 
its  history,  it  should  seem,  —  already  they  have  held 
their  Council  of  Nice  and  have  anathematized  their 
Arians. 

At  their  eighth  annual  conference,  held  at  Hull,  in 
1908,  the  Labor  Party  adopted  a  resolution  setting  forth 
their  general  aims  and  principles:  "That  in  the  opinion 
of  the  Conference  the  time  has  arrived  when  the  Labor 
Party  should  have  a  definite  object,  the  socialization  of 
the  means  of  production,  distribution,  and  exchange,  to 
be  controlled  by  a  democratic  state  in  the  interests  of  the 


SOCIALISM   IN  ENGLAND  215 

entire  community ;  and  the  complete  emancipation  of 
Labor  from  the  domination  of  capitalism  and  landlord- 
ism, with  the  establishment  of  social  and  economic  equal- 
ity between  the  sexes."  As  immediate  practical  measures, 
it  demands :  a  maximum  of  forty-eight  hours  a  week 
labor,  with  retention  of  all  legal  holidays ;  provision  of 
work  for  all,  at  minimum  pay  of  sixpence  an  hour,  the 
various  councils  to  undertake  industries  for  the  purpose ; 
State  pensions  for  all  over  fifty  years  of  age,  and  adequate 
provisions  for  widows  and  orphans;  free  education,  in- 
cluding the  university  for  all  who  desire  it,  and  free  main- 
tenance of  pupils ;  raising  the  age  of  child  labor,  with  the 
ultimate  purpose  of  abolishing  it  entirely ;  municipali- 
zation and  control  of  the  drink  traffic ;  municipalization 
of  all  hospitals  and  infirmaries ;  abolition  of  all  indirect 
taxation  and  transference  of  public  burdens  to  unearned 
incomes,  with  a  view  to  their  ultimate  extinction ;  and 
adult  suffrage. 

The  first  general  election  after  the  organization  of  the 
Labor  Party  caught  it  unprepared ;  the  contest  came 
suddenly,  and  their  organization  was  incomplete,  their 
treasury  empty.  They  made  a  gallant  fight,  but  sufl"ered 
a  bad  defeat ;  not  a  single  electoral  district  was  won,  and 
even  the  one  representative  they  had  boasted,  Keir 
Hardie,  lost  his  seat.  Chastened  and  instructed  by  this 
experience,  the  party  settled  down  to  business  in  dead 
earnest.  An  incessant  propaganda  among  the  working- 
men  was  maintained  during  the  next  five  years.  Work- 
ing-men were  put  forward  as  candidates  in  every  local 
election,  and  many  of  them  were  chosen  members  of 
local  boards  and  borough  councils.  Immediate  results 
followed  in  the  municipahzing  of  many  enterprises  that 


2l6  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

had  been  conducted  by  private  capital.  Keir  Hardie 
and  John  Burns  continued  the  organization  and  instruc- 
tion of  the  working-men,  pressing  on  them  as  a  poHtical 
principle  that  which  has  long  been  at  the  basis  of  their 
trades-union  bodies,  "The  injury  of  one  is  the  concern 
of  all."  An  increasing  number  of  workers  became  con- 
vinced that  there  is  no  weal  for  any  until  there  is  weal 
for  all. 

But,  as  we  have  noted,  there  is  little  use  in  urging  upon 
an  Englishman  an  abstract  idea,  —  he  has  something  very 
like  a  horror  of  a  general  principle.  He  will  not  move 
against  any  social  evil,  however  great,  and  particularly 
if  it  has  a  fine  ripe  flavor  of  antiquity,  until  it  becomes  a 
personal  grievance.  The  ruling  class  were  unwise  enough 
just  at  this  juncture  to  give  the  British  worker  a  personal 
grievance  against  themselves.  This  was  what  was  known 
as  the  Taff  Vale  decision,  by  which  in  1901  the  House  of 
Lords  decided  not  only  that  a  court  had  a  right  to  enjoin 
a  union  from  picketing  in  case  of  a  strike,  but  that  the 
union  could  be  made  a  party  to  a  suit  for  damages; 
which  carried  with  it  the  doctrine  that  the  funds  of  every 
union  were  liable  to  attachment  in  a  verdict  for  damages. 
The  far-reaching  effect  of  this  decision  will  be  better  ap- 
preciated when  Keir  Hardie's  estimate  of  the  strength 
of  unionism  in  England  is  scanned :  the  trades-unions 
had,  when  the  decision  was  rendered,  2,500,000  members, 
with  reserve  funds  amounting  to  £3,000,000.  As  a 
natural  sequel  to  the  decision,  the  Taff  Vale  Railway 
Company  brought  suit  for  damages  against  the  Amal- 
gamated Society  of  Railway  Servants,  and  got  a  verdict 
of  £28,000.  The  decision  was  seen  to  be  a  death-blow 
to  trades-unions  in  England,  if  it  stood  as  law.     It  re- 


SOCIALISM  IN  ENGLAND  217 

versed  the  principle  hitherto  accepted  by  English  courts, 
that  a  union  was  a  voluntary  association  and  not  a  cor- 
poration, and  hence  could  neither  sue  nor  be  sued,  — 
the  only  remedy  of  an  injured  party  was  to  sue  the  in- 
dividuals composing  the  association. 

The  unions  were  now  compelled  to  fight  for  their  very 
existence,  and  they  proceeded  to  fight  to  good  purpose. 
In  the  general  election  of  1906,  a  remarkable  result  fol- 
lowed :  twenty-six  seats  were  carried  by  official  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Labor  Party,  and  twenty-nine  others 
by  Liberal-labor  candidates,  who  owed  their  election  to 
working-men  and  wxre  pledged  to  support  their  measures 
in  Parliament.  A  gasp  of  dismay  went  up  from  both  of 
the  old  parties.  The  representatives  of  labor  held  the 
fate  of  ministries  in  their  hands,  and  as  soon  as  they 
caught  their  breath  again  both  parties  began  to  vie  with 
each  other  in  cultivating  the  good-will  and  securing  the 
support  of  this  new  political  power,  A  bill  was  promptly 
introduced  by  the  government,  providing  that  an  action 
against  a  union,  whether  of  workmen  or  masters,  or  against 
any  members  or  officials  thereof,  on  behalf  of  themselves 
or  other  members  of  the  union,  in  respect  of  any  tortious 
act  alleged  to  have  been  committed  by  or  in  behalf  of 
the  union,  shall  not  be  entertained  by  any  court.  This 
Trades  Disputes  bill,  as  it  was  known,  not  only  reversed 
the  decision  of  the  House  of  Lords,  but  gave  the  members 
of  unions  an  immunity  greater  than  they  had  ever  known 
before.  It  is  quite  usual  for  the  Lords  to  throw  out  any 
bill  of  a  reform  nature  passed  by  the  Commons,  but  they 
made  haste  to  pass  this,  —  there  were  too  many  Tory 
seats  in  the  Commons  that  might  be  at  the  mercy  of  the 
working-men  voters  at  the  next  election  to  permit  any 


2i8  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

playing  with  them.  Parliament  also  passed,  in  1906, 
a  Workman's  Compensation  Act,  assuring  an  injured 
workman  weekly  payments  not  exceeding  half  his  wages 
while  incapacitated,  and  a  sum  equal  to  three  years' 
wages  to  his  family  in  case  of  his  death. 

A  more  recent  example  has  been  given  of  the  willing- 
ness of  the  English  ruHng  class  to  make  quickly  any 
reasonable  concession  to  the  growing  power  of  the  Labor 
Party.  In  what  is  known  as  the  Osborne  Case,  the  Eng- 
lish courts  decided  that  the  trades-unions  had  no  right  to 
pay  out  of  their  general  funds  the  modest  salary  of  £200 
a  year  to  their  Parhamentary  representatives.  The  case 
was  taken  to  the  House  of  Lords,  where  final  decision  was 
rendered  December  21,  1909  that  the  Trade  Union  Act 
limits  the  activities  of  such  organizations  to  *' regulating 
the  relations  between  workmen  and  masters,  or  between 
workmen  and  workmen,  or  between  masters  and  masters, 
or  for  imposing  restrictive  conditions  on  the  conduct  of 
trade  or  business.  The  payment  of  salaries  to  members 
of  Parliament  is  ultra  vires  and  void."  This  has  made  it 
very  difficult,  and  threatens  to  make  it  impossible,  for 
the  Labor  Party  to  maintain  their  representation  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  Premier  Asquith  came  to  their 
relief  in  November,  19 10,  by  announcing  that  if  his  gov- 
ernment should  be  continued  in  power  with  a  working 
majority,  he  would  bring  in  a  bill  for  the  payment  of 
members  of  the  House,  —  a  measure  that  has  been  re- 
fused by  England's  rulers  to  the  demands  of  the  work- 
ing class  for  two  generations.  E  pur  si  muove,  even  in 
England  ! 

Much  of  the  victory  of  1906  was  due  to  the  direction 
of  the  political  campaign  by  the  Labor  Representation 


SOCIALISM  IN  ENGLAND  219 

Committee,  an  organization  that  attempted  the  federa- 
tion of  the  various  bodies  engaged  in  propagating  social- 
istic principles.  The  object  was  not  entirely  successful, 
for  the  Social  Labor  Federation  withdrew  from  coopera- 
tion with  the  others,  because  the  latter  would  not  ex- 
plicitly declare  themselves  in  favor  of  the  Marxian  prin- 
ciples and  programme.  The  Federation  has  virtually 
proclaimed  that  nobody  shall  be  recognized  as  an  ortho- 
dox socialist,  unless  he  will  profess  as  his  creed  :  "There 
is  no  God,  and  Karl  Marx  is  his  prophet."  Socialists 
flout  and  scout  the  Bible  as  a  collection  of  old  wives' 
fables,  but  the  inspiration  and  infallible  authority,  and 
even  the  inerrancy,  of  Das  Kapital  is  an  article  of  faith 
from  which  they  will  permit  no  dissent,  on  pain  of  excom- 
munication. So  long  as  they  retain  this  fanatical  and 
intolerant  spirit,  the  Marxians  will  be  a  hindrance  to 
the  progress  of  Socialism. 

VI 

The  English  movement  has  avowed  a  practical  plan  of 
immediate  legislation,  upon  the  chief  items  of  which 
all  are  agreed.  And  though  this  proposed  legislation 
would  involve  a  considerable  social  change,  it  can  hardly 
be  called  revolutionary.  While  they  differ  among  them- 
selves as  to  the  emphasis  to  be  laid  on  the  various  items, 
and  therefore  the  preferable  order  in  which  the  enact- 
ment of  them  into  law  should  be  sought,  there  is  substan- 
tial agreement  among  socialists  in  demanding,  as  rapidly 
as  possible  :  the  socialization  of  land ;  the  nationalization 
of  railways  and  expresses  ;  the  nationalization  of  all  natu- 
ral resources  —  mines,  forests,  water-power;  a  national 
banking  system ;    the  municipalizing  of  industries  con- 


2  20  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

nected  with  the  necessaries  of  life  —  water-supply,  gas, 
bread,  meat,  milk,  coal.  All  of  these  may  be  subsumed 
under  the  general  principle  of  making  public  property 
of  all  monopolies.  To  these  are  added  certain  fiscal  re- 
forms :  abolition  of  all  indirect  taxes ;  a  progressive  in- 
come tax,  a  graduated  inheritance  tax.  The  objection 
to  Socialism  by  its  opponents  that  it  has  no  practical  pro- 
gramme is  ceasing  to  be  heard  in  England,  —  this  is  much 
too  practical  for  the  taste  of  the  classes,  but  it  is  winning 
the  enthusiastic  support  of  the  masses.  The  masses 
hope,  and  the  classes  fear,  that,  if  these  steps  were  once 
taken,  the  progress  toward  ultimate  SociaHsm  would 
become  both  possible  and  easy. 

The  impression  made  by  the  great  political  success  of 
the  working-men,  and  the  measures  proposed  by  them, 
may  be  gauged  by  the  dismay  that  has  seized  the  upper 
and  middle  classes  and  the  counter  measures  that  are 
proposed.  In  order  to  take  the  wind  out  of  the  sails  of 
Socialism,  even  Tory  writers  now  advocate  a  wholesale 
State  interference  with  industrial  affairs,  the  proposition 
of  which  two  decades  ago  would  have  been  regarded  as 
little  less  than  impiety.  Specific  recommendations  of 
this  kind  have  recently  been  made  :  compulsory  arbitra- 
tion, with  voluntary  conciliation  councils;  encourage- 
ment of  cooperation  and  profit-sharing  ;  encouragement 
of  trade-unions,  especially  in  a  scientific  scheme  of  pen- 
sions for  the  relief  of  old  age,  sickness,  and  unemploy- 
ment; importation  of  alien  workers  to  be  forbidden; 
a  land  purchase  act  for  small  proprietors ;  a  house  pur- 
chase act  for  working-men ;  a  thorough  scheme  of  national 
sanitation ;  revision  of  laws  relating  to  crime  and  debt ; 
imperial  colonization,  to  dispose  of  surplus  population; 


SOCL\LISM    L\   EXGLAXD  221 

fiscal  reform  (by  which  is  meant  a  protective  tariff,  for 
the  alleged  benefit  of  working-men) ;  the  encouragement 
of  intelligence  by  making  open  careers.^ 

Just  what  is  intended  by  the  latter  proposal,  or  how 
the  end  sought  is  to  be  accomplished,  is  doubtful;  but 
these  proposals  are  all  clearly  in  the  direction  of  Socialism. 
No  sociahst  can  have  any  objections  to  them,  \'iewed  as 
steps  in  the  right  direction.  But  the  middle  class  idea 
is  evidently  that  the  Cerberus  of  Socialism  may  be  ap- 
peased by  a  few  sops ;  and  that,  if  England  will  give  social- 
ists, say,  a  quarter  of  what  they  ask,  they  will  cease  to 
demand  the  other  three-quarters.  The  amoimt  of  polit- 
ical wisdom  contained  in  such  a  scheme  can  easily  be 
estimated  by  every  reader,  tsithout  the  assistance  of  any 
further  discussion  of  these  details. 

A  marked  advance  in  practical  Socialism  has  been  made 
within  the  last  two  decades  in  many  municipalities  and 
boroughs  in  England,  by  the  undertaking  of  public  en- 
terprises for  the  common  good  that  were  formerly  left 
to  private  initiative.  Municipal  and  borough  councils 
have  taken  possession  of  local  tramways,  or  have  granted 
franchises  for  limited  periods  and  under  rigid  restrictions. 
It  is  claimed  that  as  a  result  the  English  towns  are  far 
behind  those  of  America  in  transit  facilities,  but  other 
causes  may  be  in  great  part  responsible  for  this  relative 
backwardness.  Many  cities  are  erecting  municipal  tene- 
ments, have  already  taken  over  the  water  and  gas  supply,- 

*  Wilson,  "The  Menace  of  Socialism,"  p.  416  el  seq.:  "The  Alterna- 
tive Policy." 

*  One  of  the  humorous  features  of  antisocialistic  polemics  is,  that  it 
is  perfectly  orthodo.x  to  favor  municipal  gas  in  England,  but  to  propose 
municipal  water  is  "socialistic " ;  while  in  the  United  States  it  is  orthodox 
to  favor  municipal  water,  but  distinctly  "socialistic"  to  propose  municipal 


222  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

where  they  did  not  control  these  enterprises  from  the 
beginning;  and  are  taking  charge  of  the  sale  of  milk, 
bread,  meat,  and  coal.  The  field  of  public  enterprise  has 
always  been  larger  in  Great  Britain  than  in  the  United 
States ;  the  telegraph,  like  the  post,  is  a  pubHc  institu- 
tion, and  of  late  years  the  telephone  has  been  added ; 
and  though  Englishmen  grumble  at  the  administration, 
as  a  matter  of  principle,  all  three  enterprises  are  as  well 
managed  and  give  as  good  service  as  our  own  post-office 
system,  which  nobody  believes  would  be  better  conducted 
as  a  private  enterprise.  Within  the  past  few  decades, 
there  has  also  been  a  generous  provision  made  by 
municipalities  for  parks,  playgrounds,  recreation  fields, 
museums,  art  galleries  and  libraries,  on  a  scale  never 
before  known  in  England,  and  still  paralleled  in  few  other 
countries. 

There  is  difference  of  opinion  whether  the  remarkable 
development  of  cooperation  in  England  is  to  be  credited 
to  Socialism  or  debited.  The  first  successful  attempt  at 
cooperation  was  made  by  the  Rochdale  Society  of  Equi- 
table Pioneers,  which  was  begun  in  1844  by  twenty-eight 
Lancashire  weavers,  with  a  capital  of  $140.  Its  first 
work  was  to  furnish  provisions  to  the  shareholders,  among 
whom  profits  were  to  be  divided  in  proportion  to  their 
purchases.  At  the  end  of  thirteen  years  it  had  a  mem- 
bership of  two  thousand,  and  a  capital  of  $75,000.  The 
cooperative  stores  of  the  united  services  is  a  later  in- 
stance of  similar  success  on  a  scale  even  larger.  It  is  said 
by  statisticians  that  there  is  now  a  capital  of  $330,000,000 

gas.  The  reason  for  this  blowing  hot  and  cold  by  opponents  of  Socialism 
is,  that  in  England  gas  has  from  the  first  been  generally  treated  as  a 
municipal  matter,  while  water  has  been  furnished  to  cities  mainly  by 
private  companies ;  while  in  America  precisely  the  reverse  is  true. 


SOCL\LISM  IN  ENGLAND  223 

invested  in  such  enterprises,  and  one-sixth  of  the  popu- 
lation of  England  shops  in  cooperative  stores. 

On  the  whole,  it  would  be  a  moderate  statement  to  say 
that  the  field  of  private  enterprise  is  now  considerably 
more  restricted  in  England  than  in  the  United  States,  — 
a  thing  that  many  Americans  will  doubtless  be  surprised 
to  learn.  The  socialists  look  with  indifference,  as  has 
been  intimated,  on  this  growth  of  cooperation,  regarding  it 
as  only  another  form  of  Capitalism,  instead  of  seeing  in  it 
a  trial  of  their  theories  on  a  limited  scale,  preparatory 
to  trial  on  a  universal  scale.  Those  who  engage  in  such 
experiments,  say  some  socialists,  are  simply  working  for 
their  own  selfish  profit,  and  the  community  has  no  more 
power  over  their  industry,  no  more  share  in  its  prosperity, 
than  would  be  the  case  in  any  other  form  of  Capitalism. 
Which  seems  a  selfish  and  narrow-minded,  as  well  as  short- 
sighted, way  of  regarding  a  very  significant  social  experi- 
ment. 


VII 

SOCIALISM  IN   AMERICA 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Books  by  socialists :  — 
HiLLQUiT,  History  of  Socialism  in  the  United  States.     New  York, 

igo6. 
Hunter,  Poverty.    New  York,  1907. 
Myers,  History  of  the  Great  American  Fortunes,  3  vols.     Chicago, 

1910. 

Historical  and  expository  :  — 
HiXDS,  .American  Communities.     Chicago,  igo8. 
Ely,  Sociahsm  and  Social  Reform.     1894. 

Books  on  the  single-tax  theory :  — 
George,  Progress  and  Poverty.     1879. 
Post,  The  Single  Tax.     New  York,  1895. 

Books  on  the  Trust  Problem  :  — 
Moody,  The  Truth  about  the  Trusts.    New  York,  1904. 
Je^tks,  The  Trust  Problem.     New  York,  1901. 
Lloyd,  Wealth  agamst  Commonwealth.     New  York,  1894. 
Ghent,  Our  Benevolent  FeudaHsm.    New  York,  1902. 


VII 

SOCIALISM  IN   AMERICA 


While  the  development  of  Socialism  in  America  has 
been  slow,  as  compared  with  European  countries,  the 
fact  is  ascribable  not  to  mental  impenetrability,  but  to 
absence  of  motive.  The  abundance  of  unoccupied  land, 
to  be  had  for  the  asking,  and  the  backward  state  of  manu- 
factures during  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
were  sufiicient  reasons  for  the  failure  of  SociaHsm  to  make 
swift  progress  here.  So  long  as  no  man  need  remain 
poor  unless  he  chose,  so  long  as  the  rapid  development  of 
our  natural  resources  and  the  equally  rapid  expansion  of 
our  industrial  undertakings  opened  up  careers  for  every 
ambitious  and  alert-minded  man,  the  pressure  of  the 
struggle  for  existence  was  not  unbearable.  If  the  poor 
boy  of  to-day  might  be  the  millionnaire  of  to-morrow,  why 
discuss  theories  of  society?  But  after  1870  the  pressure 
of  population  on  subsistence  and  employment  began  to 
be  a  severe  one ;  immigration  and  the  natural  increase 
brought  us  face  to  face  mth  social  problems.  Socialism 
had  hitherto  been  an  importation,  a  foreign  speculation, 
an  exotic ;  it  now  began  to  take  root  and  become  natu- 
ralized. 

This  comparatively  late  growth  of  Socialism  was  not 
for  lack  of  socialistic  literature  or  socialistic  experiments. 

227 


228  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

At  a  comparatively  early  date  in  our  history,  settlements 
were  established  on  a  more  or  less  complete  sociahstic 
basis.  Perhaps  the  earliest  of  these  were  the  Moravian 
colonies:  one  in  Georgia  as  early  as  1735;  another  at 
Bethlehem,  Pa.,  in  1741 ;  and  a  third  at  Nazareth,  in 
1743.  These  colonies  were  founded  with  a  primarily 
religious  object,  and  their  community  features  were  of 
secondary  importance;  hence  they  were  never  thor- 
oughgoing in  their  socialism.  While  there  was  com- 
munity ownership  of  the  land,  and  certain  enterprises 
(like  stores  and  bakeries)  were  managed  by  the  com- 
munity for  the  profit  of  all,  private  property  and  private 
enterprise  were  permitted.  In  every  instance,  these 
Moravian  settlements  were  prosperous;  they  accumu- 
lated wealth,  maintained  a  high  standard  of  comfort,  es- 
tablished excellent  schools,  and  vindicated  the  soundness 
of  the  principles  on  which  they  were  founded.  The 
community  features  have  been  gradually  abandoned,  not 
because  they  were  no  longer  profitable,  but  because  the 
Moravian  people  could  no  longer  resist  the  pressure  of 
the  surrounding  communities,  and  have  preferred  to  as- 
similate their  lives  to  the  economic  and  social  standards 
of  Americans  in  general.  The  fate  of  these  communities 
illustrates  a  serious  difficulty  that  Utopian  socialists  have 
always  failed  to  consider :  the  practical  impossibility  of 
maintaining  a  sociahstic  group  in  the  midst  of  a  hostile 
society.  Sooner  or  later,  every  such  group  seems  certain 
to  succumb.  If  all  of  society  cannot  be  completely 
socialized,  then  none  of  it  can  be. 

Out  of  the  large  number  of  groups  that  have  been 
founded  on  a  basis  of  religion  and  Socialism  combined, 
it  will  be  profitable  to  consider  only  a  few  cases.     One 


SOCIALISM   m  AMERICA  229 

of  the  best  known,  the  Shakers,  of  English  origin,  estab- 
lished themselves  at  WatervUet,  N.Y.,  in  1776,  whence 
they  have  scattered  through  nine  States  in  fifteen  societies. 
Fifty  or  sLxty  years  ago,  there  was  a  total  Shaker  popula- 
tion of  five  thousand,  but  they  have  now  dmndled  to 
about  a  thousand.  They  own  a  hundred  thousand  acres, 
and  their  property  is  valued  at  several  millions.  But 
though  they  have  thus  maintained  themselves  for  more 
than  a  century,  and  have  been  able  to  accumulate  con- 
siderable wealth,  their  rapidly  failing  numbers  admonish 
us  that  this  cannot  be  reckoned  a  successful  experiment 
in  Sociahsm. 

Several  groups  owed  their  origin  to  immigration  from 
Germany.  Of  these  the  earUest,  and  perhaps  the  most 
important,  was  due  to  the  coming  to  the  United  States, 
in  1804,  of  some  six  himdred  Separatists  from  Wiirtem- 
berg.  They  attempted  to  establish  themselves  in  sev- 
eral fields,  and  finally  settled  at  Economy,  Pa.,  near 
Pittsburgh.  In  1807,  they  became  celibates,  and  now 
their  steadily  decreasing  community  is  practically  a  cap- 
itahstic  body,  eraplo}dng  outside  labor  on  a  considerable 
scale,  at  day  wages,  for  the  benefit  of  the  stockholders. 
The  Socialism  of  these  Rappists,  as  they  are  also  called, 
has  not  so  much  failed  as  disappeared. 

A  similar  colony  of  Germans  who  settled  at  Zoar,  in 
1817,  did  not  begin  as  a  community,  but  so  organized 
themselves  after  two  years.  More  than  two  generations 
of  prosperity  followed,  and  then  the  survivors  dissolved 
by  mutual  consent,  in  1898,  each  receiving  about  $1500 
from  the  common  estate. 

The  Amana  colony,  first  settled  near  Buffalo,  but  after- 
wards removed  to  Iowa,  where  about  eighteen  hundred 


230  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

people  live  in  seven  villages,  have  had  a  history  of  con- 
tinuous growth  and  prosperity,  from  1855  till  the  present 
time.  Each  family  has  a  separate  house,  but  a  common 
dining-hall  is  maintained  in  each  village.  Marriage  is 
not  forbidden,  but  seems  to  be  discouraged  among  them ; 
as  it  is  permitted  to  no  man  until  he  has  reached  the  age 
of  twenty-four,  and  then  only  by  vote  of  the  elders ;  and 
wedding  ceremonies  are  said  to  be  as  lugubrious  as  a 
funeral.  The  means  of  producing  wealth  are  owned  in 
common ;  the  labors  of  the  community  are  directed  by 
the  elders ;  and  each  member  is  given  a  certain  credit  at 
the  community  store,  where  he  gets  what  he  pleases  and 
has  it  charged  to  his  account.  Many  of  the  features  of 
Bellamy's  "Looking  Backward"  are  found  realized  in 
the  Amana  community,  which,  on  the  whole,  is  probably 
the  most  completely  socialistic  and  the  most  economically 
successful  of  all  American  experiments  of  this  kind. 

The  most  notorious  of  the  religious-socialistic  groups, 
the  Oneida  Community,  was  founded  in  1848  by  John 
Humphrey  Noyes,  and  is  the  one  experiment  of  this  kind 
that  was  conducted  by  people  of  native  stock.  It  has 
had  a  remarkable  record  of  harmony,  only  one  member 
having  been  expelled  during  its  history,  and  has  been 
prosperous  beyond  the  average.  It  was  dissolved  as  a 
religious  community  in  1880,  at  which  time  it  had  prop- 
erty valued  at  a  million  dollars,  and  was  reorganized  as 
a  corporation,  the  "Oneida  Community,  Limited."  The 
Community  long  ago  gained  a  high  reputation  for  the 
quality  of  its  manufactures,  which  it  still  retains. 

Nearly  all  of  the  other  religious  communities,  as  well 
as  those  that  have  been  mentioned,  were  economically 
successful.     Many  of  them  endured  for  half  a  century 


SOCIALISM   IN  AMERICA  231 

or  longer;  several  amassed  much  wealth.  But  it  was 
true  of  all,  as  well  as  of  the  Moravians,  that  the  religious 
motive  predominated,  and  the  social  experiment  stood 
in  the  second  place.  It  was  also  true  that  the  member- 
ship of  all  was  carefully  winnowed,  so  that  these  com- 
munities were  composed  of  homogeneous  material,  indus- 
trious and  frugal  people,  well  fitted  to  make  their  way  in 
the  world  as  individuals  before  they  became  parts  of 
communities.  The  religious  bond  promoted  harmony; 
the  character  of  the  people  insured  success  in  the  in- 
dustrial part  of  the  venture.  And  in  the  end,  nearly  all 
such  communities  that  have  survived  have  ceased  to 
emphasize  the  community  feature,  and  have  become, 
either  avowedly  or  in  fact,  mere  corporations,  of  which 
the  members  are  stockholders. 

n 

Contemporary  with  some  of  the  later  religious  com- 
munities were  numerous  experiments  due  to  the  doctrines 
of  Fourier.  Several  of  these  experiments  were  more 
immediately  inspired  by  Robert  Owen,  who  thought  to 
find  in  a  new  world  a  better  opportunity  for  the  develop- 
ment of  his  ideas  than  was  offered  by  any  old-world 
society.  In  1825  he  came  to  the  United  States,  and  found 
at  Harmony,  Ind.,  a  favorable  field  for  his  venture.  The 
Rappists  then  had  there  a  tract  of  thirty  thousand  acres, 
of  which  they  had  brought  three  thousand  under  culti- 
vation, besides  laying  out  a  village.  This  property,  on 
which  the  most  difiicult  work  had  aheady  been  done, 
Owen  acquired  for  $150,000.  William  Maclure  of  Phila- 
delphia, a  man  of  considerable  culture,  wealth,  and  abil- 
ity, was  his  associate,  and  the  aid  of  a  number  of  men 


232  SOCIALISM  AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

eminent  in  science  and  education  was  enlisted.  No  com- 
munity began  with  more  favorable  conditions,  and  Owen 
had  the  liveliest  expectations  of  a  grand  success,  that 
should  impress  the  world  with  the  advantages  of  Social- 
ism. With  his  usual  expansiveness,  he  invited  "  the  in- 
dustrious and  well-disposed  of  all  nations"  to  find  a 
home  here  and  share  in  the  coming  prosperity  of  New 
Harmony. 

Some  of  the  industrious  and  well-disposed  came,  but 
mostly  the  lazy  and  the  ill-disposed  accepted  the  invita- 
tion, a  motley  and  heterogeneous  crowd  of  incongruous 
natures  and  irreconcilable  aims.  No  pains  were  taken 
to  select  from  applicants  who  offered  themselves  such  as 
gave  some  token  of  fitness  for  taking  part  in  such  an 
experiment.  The  community  so  constituted  was  fore- 
doomed to  failure.  It  lasted  little  more  than  two  years, 
and  during  that  time  had  more  revolutions  than  a  South 
American  republic,  —  seven  "constitutions"  having  been 
tried  and  found  wanting,  an  average  of  little  more  than 
three  months  for  each.  Twice  Owen  himself  was  "dic- 
tator," by  the  vote  of  the  community,  but  even  he  could 
not  bring  order  out  of  this  chaos.  The  colony  broke  up 
as  a  community ;  most  of  its  members  went  away,  and 
those  who  remained  in  possession  of  the  land  relapsed  into 
the  ordinary  life  of  the  ordinary  American  village.  A 
half  dozen  other  communities,  more  or  less  of  the  Owen 
type,  had  a  similar  history. 

Of  all  the  earlier  American  trials  of  Socialism,  the  most 
famous  was  that  of  Brook  Farm,  in  West  Roxbury,  Mass. 
This  prominence  was  due  to  the  personnel  of  the  colony ; 
nearly  every  man  or  woman  connected  with  it  was  then 
or    afterwards    distinguished.     The    head    and    leading 


SOCIALISM   IN  AMERICA  233 

spirit  was  George  Ripley,  in  after  years  the  literary  editor 
of  the  New  York  Tribune,  and  even  then  a  well-known 
man  of  letters.  Among  the  most  prominent  members 
were  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  Margaret  Fuller,  George 
William  Curtis,  Charles  A.  Dana,  and  Theodore  S. 
Dwight.  The  colony  had  besides,  as  sympathetic  friends 
and  occasional  visitors,  a  large  number  of  the  most  emi- 
nent Americans  of  the  time :  the  two  Channings,  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson,  Horace  Greeley.  Hawthorne  has  left 
on  record  his  impressions  in  his  ''Blithedale  Romance," 
and  other  members  of  the  colony  have  in  more  sober  prose 
gi\'en  us  their  reminiscences.  All  this  has  combined  to 
make  Brook  Farm  eclipse  every  other  community  ex- 
periment. 

Yet  of  all,  none  achieved  a  more  dismal  failure  than 
this.  It  was  made  up  of  most  accomplished  and  amiable 
persons,  of  the  least  possible  practical  experience,  none 
of  them  accustomed  to  earning  his  own  living  before 
coming  to  the  farm,  and  all  quite  ignorant  of  agriculture, 
which  was  practically  the  only  occupation  offered.  There 
was  abundance  of  food  for  the  mind  and  very  little  for 
the  body  at  Brook  Farm,  no  end  of  culture  and  social 
enjoyment,  but  little  practical  prosperity.  After  1844, 
this  became  the  centre  of  the  Fourier  propaganda  in 
America ;  the  principal  magazine  was  edited  and  pub- 
lished there.  Money  was  obtained  for  the  building  of  a 
large  Phalanstery,  but  asthiswasnearing  completion  it  was 
destroyed  by  fire  (1846).  The  Fourier  movement  was 
already  on  the  wane,  and  this  misfortune  was  a  death- 
blow to  Brook  Farm.  It  proved  impossible  to  obtain 
money  for  rebuilding ;  in  a  few  months  the  colony  broke 
up,  and  the  property  was  sold. 


234  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

Though  much  the  most  famous,  this  was  far  from  the 
only,  experiment  along  Fourierist  lines.  The  diligence 
of  investigators  has  recovered  data  of  forty-one  pha- 
lanxes, mostly  established  between  1841  and  1853,  ^•U 
of  which  were  failures.  The  average  duration  of  such 
experiments  was  little  more  than  two  years.  They  did 
not  approach  the  religious  communities  in  economic  suc- 
cess :  few  of  them  had  even  moderate  prosperity ;  most 
of  them  experienced  hard  labor  and  dire  poverty.  The 
common  experience  of  all  these  attempts  proved  to  a 
demonstration  that  the  immediate  estabhshment  of 
Sociahsm,  with  the  average  human  material,  in  the  ab- 
sence of  religion  or  some  other  strong  bond,  is  hopeless. 
The  only  hope  of  successful  Socialism  is  in  a  gradual 
evolution. 

Ill 

The  beginning  of  real  American  Socialism  was  con- 
temporary with  the  later  British ;  that  is  to  say,  it  cannot 
be  placed  farther  back  than  the  eighties.  Any  socialists 
before  that  time  were  immigrants,  mostly  German,  who 
had  brought  their  theories  along  with  their  other  scanty 
baggage,  and  were  rather  laughed  at  than  taken  seriously. 
But  in  the  eighties  Socialism  began  to  get  a  hearing  and 
to  win  adherents  among  native-born  Americans.  The 
causes  of  this  development  are  not  far  to  seek,  but  so 
many  people  have  never  comprehended  them,  and  so 
many  more  yet  refuse  to  consider  them,  that  it  is  worth 
our  while  to  give  some  time  and  space  to  their  consid- 
eration. 

The  theory  of  American  law,  statute  and  constitutional, 
is  that  all  men  are  free  and  equal.    The  equality  predi- 


SOCIALISM  IN  AMERICA  235 

cated  is,  of  course,  understood  to  be,  not  actual  equality, 
but  equality  of  rights  and  social  opportunities.  Our 
entire  system  of  civil  and  criminal  jurisprudence  is  based 
on  this  assumption.  American  Socialism  has  grown  out 
of  the  observed  and  experienced  variance  between  this 
theory  of  the  law  and  the  facts ;  and  is  nothing  else  than 
an  attempt  to  make  the  facts  correspond  to  the  theory. 
The  principles  of  the  Declaration  are  the  principles  of 
every  socialist  —  what  he  wishes  is,  to  give  them  prac- 
tical effect. 

The  American  laborer  finds  that  he  occupies  two  posi- 
tions in  the  world  of  fact,  one  of  which  is  quite  irrecon- 
cilable with  the  theory  of  the  law.  As  a  citizen  and  voter 
he  is  free,  the  equal  of  any.  He  may  cast  his  vote  without 
hinderance,  and  if  he  is  fortunate  he  may  get  it  counted ; 
he  may  aspire  to  any  office,  and  may  sometimes  be  elected. 
But  as  a  member  of  the  industrial  community  he  occupies 
a  dependent  position  that  is  incompatible  with  freedom 
— a  new  form  of  the  ancient  slavery,  in  fact.  Here,  too, 
the  law  makes  all  men  equal,  but  Capitalism  nullifies  the 
law  and  makes  men  unequal.  We  may  paraphrase  Lin- 
coln's words,  and  say  that  society  cannot  endure  perma- 
nently in  a  state  half  slave,  half  free.  Either  freedom 
or  slavery  will  in  the  end  prevail.  But  at  present  this 
half-and-half  state  is  the  real  fact,  contradicting  the  the- 
ory of  the  law.  Just  as'under  the  feudal  system  the  lords 
held  all  the  land,  and  the  common  people  lived  on  it  by 
their  sufferance  and  on  their  terms,  so  under  the  capital- 
istic system  the  common  people  (some  of  them)  arc 
benevolently  permitted  to  work  (some  of  the  time)  by 
those  who  hold  all  the  means  of  production.  This  state 
of  things  has  come  about,  as  the  socialist  economists 


236  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

maintain,  because  an  orderly  and  regular  development 
has  in  large  measure  effected  the  socialization  of  labor  in 
producing  wealth,  while  the  private  ownership  of  capital 
and  the  system  of  exchange  have  retained  the  distribu- 
tion of  wealth  mainly  in  the  hands  of  individuals. 

That  this  wide  gap  between  theory  and  fact  really 
exists  will  hardly  be  denied.  But  there  are  obviously 
two  ways  of  dealing  with  the  problems  that  such  a  con- 
tradiction suggests.  One  has  already  been  mentioned, 
the  way  of  the  socialist :  to  make  an  honest  effort  to  close 
the  gap,  so  that  theory  and  fact  shall  correspond.  The 
other  method  is,  to  bend  all  energies  toward  keeping 
things  as  they  are,  to  shut  one's  eyes  to  all  social  inequal- 
ities and  social  iniquities,  to  denounce  all  who  propose 
change  as  mischievous  fanatics  and  enemies  of  the  social 
order  —  in  short,  to  "stand  pat."  The  late  E.  L.  God- 
kin  was  a  tj'pe  of  this  large  and  influential  class  of  Amer- 
icans. In  the  columns  of  the  New  York  Evening  Post, 
and  in  his  published  Essays,  he  poured  out  a  flood  of  ridi- 
cule and  denunciation  on  all  who  demand  any  serious 
modification  of  existing  social  institutions.  "I  know  of  no 
more  mischievous  person,"  said  he,  "  than  the  man  who, 
in  free  America,  seeks  to  spread  among  them  [the  workers] 
the  idea  that  they  are  wronged  and  kept  down  by  some- 
body ;  that  somebody  is  to  blame  because  they  are  not 
better  lodged,  better  housed,  better  educated,  and  have 
not  easier  access  to  balls,  concerts,  or  dinner  parties." 

But  there  is  a  more  mischievous  person,  and  that  is  the 
man  of  education,  who  should  be  a  man  of  Hght  and  lead- 
ing, but  who  spends  one-half  his  talent  and  energy  in  telling 
the  workers  that  they  have  no  right  to  aspire  to  the  pur- 
suit of  happiness,  that  it  is  their  duty  to  accept  their  hard 


SOCL\LISM   IN  AilERICA  237 

lot  without  murmuring  or  questioning;  and  the  other 
half  in  administering  sedatives  to  the  consciences  of  the 
well-to-do,  so  that  they  shall  rest  content  with  what  they 
have  and  make  no  effort  to  better  conditions.  Such  a 
man,  and  not  the  man  with  the  bomb,  is  the  really  dan- 
gerous revolutionary.  For  we  learn  from  history  —  well, 
what  do  we  learn  from  history?  Hegel  says,  "We  learn 
from  history  that  no  one  learns  anything  from  history" 
—  we  ought,  then,  to  learn  from  history  that  this  is  the 
precise  way  to  provoke  bloody  and  destructive  revolu- 
tions. 

Some  maintain  that  history  never  repeats  itself,  but 
it  certainly  offers  some  striking  parallels ;  and  if  we  may 
reason  from  analogy,  suggested  by  former  revolutionary 
episodes,  we  shall  conclude  that  if  the  capitalist  class  of 
to-day  recognize  the  inevitable  change  coming,  and  yield 
in  time  with  just  and  reasonable  concessions,  the  recon- 
struction of  society  will  be  accomphshed  by  the  machinery 
of  existing  laws  and  government.  If,  on  the  contrary, 
the  policy  of  "stand  pat"  and  resistance  be  maintained, 
if  wealth  be  used  to  corrupt  legislatures  and  courts  and 
officials  in  the  vain  hope  of  resisting  an  irresistible  tide 
of  social  feeling,  the  result  will  be  a  violent  explosion  like 
the  French  Revolution,  involving  loss  of  life  and  confis- 
cation of  property.  England  has  avoided  effusion  of 
blood  and  spoliation  of  one  class  by  another,  by  a  slow 
yielding  on  the  part  of  her  ruling  class  at  every  crisis  when 
longer  struggle  would  have  meant  a  violent  revolution. 
The  French  nobility  had  no  such  political  wisdom,  and 
the  penalty  for  their  obstinate  resistance  to  the  very  last 
was  that  they  lost  their  property  and  their  lives  when  the 
inevitable   reconstruction  came.     Will  our  ruling  class 


238  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

imitate  the  English  nobihty  or  the  French  ?  On  the  an- 
swer to  that  question  hangs  the  peaceful  character  of  the 
change  impending,  but  that  the  change  will  come  we  may 
hold  for  certain. 

What  makes  for  a  peaceful  change  is  the  absence  of 
any  deep  class  hatred.  The  average  American  may  envy 
a  milHonnaire,  but  he  does  not  hate  him  —  "  there  but  for 
the  grace  of  God,  go  I,"  he  says  to  himself.  But  it  is  a 
sinister  fact  that  something  very  like  hatred  is  growing 
in  American  society  towards  the  brutality  of  wealth  that 
revels  in  luxury  and  makes  ostentatious  display  of  its 
wicked  waste  while  the  poor  starve.  For  they  who  look 
on  at  this  display,  as  vulgar  as  it  is  wicked,  know  well  that 
in  order  that  these  may  enjoy  what  they  did  not  produce, 
it  was  necessary  for  other  men  to  produce  what  they  are 
not  permitted  to  enjoy.  Yet  this  flaunting  of  wealth  in 
the  faces  of  the  poor  is  not  likely  to  result  in  violent  revo- 
lution and  spoliation,  because  of  the  political  power  of 
the  poor  man  when  he  becomes  intelligent  enough  to 
realize  and  use  it.  A  party  of  socialists,  let  us  say,  strong 
enough  numerically  and  otherwise  to  overthrow  existing 
institutions  by  violence,  will  probably  be  strong  enough 
to  obtain  their  ends  without  violence.  The  moment  a 
revolution  becomes  possible  here,  it  has  become  unneces- 
sary,^ Bullets  and  bombs  are  for  those,  and  for  those 
only,  who  have  not  ballots. 

Not  only  in  a  less  inclination  to  violent  measures,  but 

^  A  story  told  of  two  prominent  advocates  of  Socialism  indicates  that 
they  are  not  all  of  one  mind  regarding  the  future.  They  were  guests  of  a 
certain  club,  and  were  requested  to  sign  their  names  in  the  visitors'  book 
with  a  sentiment.  The  first  did  so  as  follows:  "Yours  for  the  Revolu- 
tion, Jack  London."  The  other  wrote  under  this,  "There  ain't  going  to 
be  no  revolution,  H.  G.  Wells." 


SOCIALISM  IN  MIERICA  239 

in  many  other  particulars,  American  socialists  differ  from 
those  who,  in  Germany  and  France,  in  Italy  and  Spain, 
and  even  in  Great  Britain,  bear  the  same  name  and  in 
general  maintain  similar  principles.  There  has  devel- 
oped here  a  distinct  type  of  what  may  be  called  with  pro- 
priety, American  Socialism.  The  political  and  social 
atmosphere  is  different  here,  and  above  all  the  religious, 
and  this  accounts  for  the  observed  divergence  of  type. 
The  American  socialist  is  much  less  grudgeful  against  all 
existing  institutions  than  his  European  prototype.  The 
absence  of  any  State  Church,  the  prevalence  of  complete 
religious  liberty,  make  him  far  less  hostile  to  religion  than 
is  the  case  in  Europe,  where  State  Churches,  both  Prot- 
estant and  Catholic,  are  regarded  as  chief  bulwarks  of 
social  evils.  It  is  true  that  many  socialists  in  America 
believe  that  organized  Christianity  here  is  the  ally  of 
CapitaHsm,  and  therefore  the  foe  of  social  progress,  and 
this  feeling  is  something  to  be  reckoned  with.  This  mat- 
ter will  be  discussed  more  fully  in  a  later  chapter,  and  here 
it  is  sufficient  to  remark  that  this  feeling,  though  undoubt- 
edly existent,  lacks  the  rancor  of  European  Socialism 
towards  all  forms  of  religion,  and  there  is  no  assertion  of 
crass  atheism  as  part  of  a  programme.  Since  in  Amer- 
ica the  marriage  of  convenience,  though  not  unknown, 
is  not  the  rule,  since  parental  coercion  is  so  rare  that  we 
may  almost  say  it  is  non-existent,  there  is  all  the  freedom 
of  union  that  even  Socialism  contemplates  ;  and  in  many 
States  there  is  nearly  as  much  freedom  of  divorce  as  any 
socialists  have  demanded ;  therefore,  the  socialistic  op- 
position to  legal  marriage  is  much  less  insistent  in  Amer- 
ica than  in  Europe.  Moreover,  though  American  social- 
ists in  the  main  avow  themselves  followers  of  Marx,  they 


240  SOCIALISM  AND,  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

have  much  modified  his  theories  of  labor  and  value. 
They  recognize  distinctly  the  high  value  of  mental  labor, 
the  importance  of  direction  in  all  industrial  undertak- 
ings, and  maintain  that  means  must  be  found  to  promote 
and  reward  this  kind  of  labor  in  the  new  social  order, 

"All  men  are  born  free  and  equal,"  as  the  Declaration 
holds,  only  in  the  sense  that  all  are  born  equally  men. 
Because  of  this  common  manhood,  each  person  who  comes 
into  the  world  has  an  equal  right  with  all  others  to  the 
life  of  a  man,  and  to  all  that  constitutes  such  a  life.  The 
"equality"  contemplated  by  the  socialist  is  equality  of 
obligation  to  one's  fellows,  to  be  a  producer  of  wealth 
according  to  abihty ;  and  society  is  under  a  correlate 
obligation  to  guarantee  to  every  human  being  who  fulfils 
his  duty  such  a  share  of  the  common  wealth  as  shall  make 
possible  to  him  a  life  worthy  of  his  manhood.  There 
surely  cannot  be  a  nobler  ideal  of  human  existence,  so 
far  as  its  material  conditions  are  concerned,  than  this. 
Contrast  it  with  these  facts  from  the  census  of  1900: 
nine-tenths  of  one  per  cent  of  the  population  of  the 
United  States  owned  70.5  per  cent  of  the  wealth;  29 
per  cent  owned  25.3  per  cent  of  the  wealth;  while  70.1 
per  cent  owned  4.2  per  cent  of  the  wealth.^  It  would 
be  possible  to  furnish  pages  of  such  figures  as  these,  as  an 

1  These  facts  may  be  approximately  indicated    to  the  eye  by  a 
diagram :  — 

Population  Wealth 

-    0.9  70.5 

I  29.0  25.3 

— — ^M  70.1  4.2  ■"™~ 


SOCIALISM   IN  AMERICA  241 

explanation  of  the  growth  of  Socialism  in  America,  but 
to  Httle  purpose,  for  it  is  not  enough  for  this  or  for  any- 
other  worthy  object  merely  to  accumulate  facts  about 
society.  Something  is  needed  beyond  an  industrious 
observer,  more  even  than  an  accurate  observer.  Not 
sight  alone,  but  insight,  must  be  our  equipment  for  this 
study,  if  our  results  are  to  have  any  value.  We  shall  find 
the  spirit  that  moves  society  by  a  study  of  statistics  and 
an  analysis  of  social  facts  on  the  day  after  we  discover 
faith,  hope,  and  charity  by  the  scalpel  in  the  dissecting 
room. 

American  Socialism  differs  from  European  in  that  it 
has  completely  thrown  off  the  notion  that  it  is  possible 
to  reach  the  social  millennium  at  one  jump.  It  recog- 
nizes the  folly  of  social  Utopias,  and  maintains  firmly 
that  the  hope  of  establishing  a  just  social  order  lies  in  an 
evolution.  It  believes  that  there  are  signs  all  around  us 
of  a  tendency  in  the  direction  of  socializing  industry,  that 
may  be  hastened  by  effort  and  legislation,  but  that  no 
sudden  change  to  a  new  order  is  either  possible  or  desir- 
able. It  recognizes  frankly  the  difficulties  in  the  way, 
and  that  time  and  gradual  change  are  necessary  to  sur- 
mount them.  It  does  not  discourage  present  attempts 
to  mitigate  social  suffering,  provided  these  are  recognized 
as  palliatives,  not  as  cures.  Kind  and  considerate  treat- 
ment of  employees  by  employers  will  do  much  for  the 
relief  of  misery,  and  is  therefore  worthy  of  encouragement, 
but  it  is  absurd  to  expect  from  such  means  the  removal 
of  evils  that  are  inherent  in  the  capitalistic  system. 

Some  socialists  arc  far  from  cordial  in  their  comments 
on  the  tendency  among  American  millionnaires  to  devote 
a  portion  of  their  wealth  to  humanitarian  enterprises  — 


242  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

hospitals,  universities,  libraries  —  and  indignantly  assert 
that  what  they  ask  is  not  the  doling  out  as  ''charity" 
of  some  small  part  of  unjustly  gained  wealth,  but  that  the 
power  of  one  man  to  exploit  another,  being  the  tap-root 
of  social  evils,  must  be  abolished,  and  then  there  will  be 
no  ill-gotten  wealth  and  no  need  of  charity.  This  atti- 
tude cannot,  however,  be  said  to  be  characteristic  of 
American  Socialism  as  a  whole.  Rather  there  is  a  ten- 
dency to  the  calmer  and  more  equitable  view,  that  the 
rich  as  well  as  the  poor  among  us  are  the  victims  of  the 
social  system,  and  powerless  by  themselves  to  cure  its 
evils.  The  single  employer  can  do  as  little  as  the  single 
employee  to  better  the  social  order.  If  he  spends  more 
money  on  sanitation,  if  he  employs  fewer  child  workers, 
if  he  pays  higher  than  the  market  rate  of  wages,  his  cut- 
throat competitor  will  undersell  him,  and  eventual  bank- 
ruptcy will  be  the  reward  of  his  humane  attempts. 

But  the  employer  can  afford  to  support  every  law  for 
the  betterment  of  the  conditions  of  labor,  because  the  law 
will  impose  equal  obligation  on  all  his  competitors. 
This  makes  inexcusable  the  combination  of  capitalists 
to  resist,  first  the  enactment,  and  then  the  enforcement 
of  labor-reform  laws.  They  have  not  even  greed  as  an 
excuse ;  it  is  pure  inhumanity  that  actuates  them,  when 
it  is  not  blind  conservatism.  But  even  when  capitalists 
favor  labor  legislation,  the  principle  is  still  valid  that,  as 
society  as  a  whole  has  made  existing  institutions,  society 
as  a  whole  must  unmake  them  and  remake  them ;  and 
in  the  meantime  individuals  are  responsible  only  for  mak- 
ing existing  conditions  as  workable,  as  little  oppressive, 
as  may  be.  There  is,  in  this  view  of  the  case,  a  large 
field  for  private  action  looking  toward  the  amelioration 


SOCIALISM  IN  AMERICA  243 

of  social  conditions,  while  we  all  await,  and  hasten  if  we 
can,  the  evolution  that  is  to  result  in  permanent  and 
complete  betterment. 

It  is  because  of  this  faith  in  an  evolution  of  the  new 
social  order  out  of  existing  elements,  that  the  attitude 
of  socialists  toward  the  Trusts  differs  so  widely  from  the 
attitude  of  the  average  Am.erican.  Unless  he  is  person- 
ally interested  in  some  Trust,  or  is  in  friendly  relations  to 
some  one  who  is  personally  interested,  the  man  in  the 
street  is  opposed  to  all  Trusts.  He  favors  every  legisla- 
tive measure  that  will  limit  their  powers  and  dissolve 
their  combinations  of  capital.  He  scorns  the  distinction 
sometimes  made  between  the  good  Trusts  and  the  bad  — 
he  believes  them  all  bad,  all  formed  to  limit  production, 
eUminate  competition  and  impose  higher  prices  on  the 
consumer,  and  all,  therefore,  more  or  less  setting  at  de- 
fiance the  principles  of  the  common  law  and  innumerable 
statutes,  that  every  combination  in  restraint  of  trade  is 
illegal.  His  favorite  political  leader  is  one  who  has  a 
reputation  as  a  "Trust-buster."  This  same  average 
American  still  believes  that  it  is  possible  to  pass  some 
law,  and  to  get  some  court  to  enforce  it,  by  which  the 
Trusts  shall  be  dissolved,  and  the  old  era  of  competition 
be  restored. 

The  socialist,  on  the  other  hand,  sees  in  this  develop- 
ment of  the  Trust  an  inevitable  stage  in  the  evolution  of 
industrial  society,  and  does  not  believe  that  any  such 
forward  step  can  ever  be  retraced.  He  can  cite  some 
impressive  facts  in  support  of  his  view.  The  oldest  of 
the  Trusts,  the  Standard  Oil,  was  formed  some  thirty 
years  ago,  and  ever  since  then  the  American  people  have 
been  trying  to  secure  its  dissolution,  yet  it  has  grown 


244  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

larger  and  more  powerful  every  year.  More  than  twenty 
years  ago,  as  organized  in  the  States  of  Ohio  and  New 
York,  it  was  declared  illegal  and  commanded  by  the 
courts  to  dissolve.  It  obeyed,  and  immediately  per- 
fected another  and  more  efficient  organization  under  the 
laws  of  New  Jersey.  In  May,  191 1,  it  was  again  pro- 
nounced illegal  and  commanded  to  dissolve,  by  the  de- 
cision of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States.  But 
months  before  it  was  announced  that,  if  such  a  decision 
should  be  rendered,  the  stock  of  the  fifty  or  more  sub- 
companies  will  be  distributed  pro  rata  among  the  share- 
holders of  the  New  Jersey  concern.  Ownership  of  the 
sub-companies  will  be  as  consolidated  as  ever,  and  com- 
petition will  not  be  promoted  in  the  least. 

It  is  not  likely  that  any  legal  ingenuity  can  contrive 
an  Antitrust  law  that  other  legal  ingenuity  cannot  evade. 
The  Sherman  law  is  a  ''rainbow-chaser,"  to  borrow  a 
picturesque  phrase  from  current  politics.  We  are  not 
likely  to  go  back  to  an  era  of  competition,  but  are  in  all 
likelihood  going  forward  to  still  greater  consolidation. 
The  trend  of  economic  development  is  unmistakable, 
the  advantages  of  consolidation  are  incontestable,  and  the 
force  of  the  movement  is  irresistible.  No  law  or  combina- 
tion of  laws  can  do  more,  probably,  than  disturb  condi- 
tions and  delay  progress.  The  breaking  down  of  the 
high  tariff  wall  might  lead  to  the  dissolution  of  certain 
Trusts,  by  bringing  in  foreign  competition,  but  even  this 
is  doubtful ;  for,  in  the  case  of  such  alteration  of  the 
tariff,  the  next  step  would  be  international  consolidation 
of  industries,  which  is  already  in  sight  for  some  and,  in 
any  case,  not  far  off  for  all. 

Socialists  recognize  this  inevitable  trend  of  industrial 


SOCI.\LISM  IN  AMERICA  24$ 

development,  and  see  in  it  the  first  step  to  complete  so- 
cialization of  industry.  They  expect,  and  even  hope,  that 
the  development  will  go  on ;  that  it  will  with  every  suc- 
cessive year  become  plainer  to  the  people  that  no  step 
backward  is  possible;  that  the  Trusts  cannot  be  legis- 
lated out  of  existence,  but  must  continue  to  become  more 
numerous  and  more  powerful,  until  practically  all  branches 
of  industry  are  "trustified."  This  is  even  now  accom- 
panied with  inconvenience  and  suffering.  The  cost  of 
living  is  soaring  aloft  at  a  rate  that  makes  it  increasingly 
difficult  for  the  poor  to  command  even  the  necessaries  of 
life,  to  say  nothing  of  luxuries.  Capital  is  becoming 
consolidated  until  the  most  careless  observer  must  feel 
alarmed  at  the  power  thus  lodged  in  a  few  hands,  irre- 
sponsible and  unchecked  in  the  use  of  this  tremendous 
weapon  for  good  or  evil.  Venice,  with  its  oligarchy  of 
nobles,  its  Council  of  Ten,  stands  as  an  example  of  the 
worst  kind  of  despotism  under  the  forms  of  republican 
government  known  in  history.  We,  too,  are  a  republic, 
but  to-day  ten  men  can  sit  around  a  table  in  New  York 
and  dictate  the  business  policy  of  the  nation ;  they  can 
precipitate  or  stop  a  panic ;  they  wield  a  power  greater 
than  that  of  the  government  of  the  United  States,  and 
are  responsible  to  none  but  themselves,  save  for  that  in- 
definable yet  real  check  on  all  power  that  we  name  pub- 
lic opinion.  They  can  do  all  this,  they  have  done  and 
are  doing  all  this,  because  of  the  wealth  they  control,  — 
three-fourths  of  the  entire  wealth  of  our  country.  The 
life  and  fortune  of  half  the  voters  of  the  United  States  arc 
at  this  moment  at  the  mercy  of  these  ten  men. 

How  long,  asks  the  socialist,  will  the  liberty-loving 
people  of  America  endure  this  state  of  things,  when  they 


246  SOCIALISM  AND   THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

once  comprehend  it  ?  Will  they  not  insist  on  taking  into 
their  own  hands  this  power,  power  that  belongs  to  them, 
since  they  and  not  these  ten  men  have  created  this 
wealth  ?  Will  they  not  insist  that  these  great  industries, 
already  so  largely  socialized,  shall  be  completely  socialized  ? 
Will  they  not  see  that  it  is  better  for  the  nation  at  large, 
that  the  people  themselves  should  assume  the  ownership 
and  management  of  industries,  than  to  permit  them  to 
remain  in  private  hands;  that  industrial  enterprises 
should  be  conducted  for  the  good  of  all,  and  not  for  the 
profit  of  a  few  ?  And  above  all,  will  not  the  people  see 
clearly  before  long  that,  unless  this  is  done,  it  will  be 
absurd  to  talk  longer  about  "free  America"  —  that  con- 
tinued freedom,  in  any  real  sense,  is  impossible  under 
such  a  system  ? 

We  must  in  fairness  consider  the  general  denial  of  the 
Trusts,  that  the  rise  in  prices  and  the  increased  cost  of 
living  is  due  to  their  agency.  The  combination  of  pack- 
ers popularly  known  as  the  Meat  Trust,  for  example, 
would  persuade  us  that  the  high  prices  of  meats  should 
be  ascribed  to  anything  and  everything  else  than  to  them 
—  to  the  increased  production  of  gold,^  or  to  a  decrease 
in  production,  or  to  an  increase  of  consumers,  or  to  the 
exactions  of  middlemen  and  retailers.  It  is  possible, 
probable  even,  that  most  of  these  reasons  for  an  advance 
in  prices  have  a  foundation  of  fact;  but  from  this 
concession  must  be  excepted  the  supposed  decrease  in 
production,  if  figures  collected  by  the  Department  of 

1  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  this  is  an  important  factor  in  the  rise 
of  prices.  In  1909  the  production  of  gold  amounted  to  $450,000,000, 
which  was  four  times  the  annual  average  from  i860  to  1890.  This  enor- 
mous production  of  gold  has  made  a  "back  number"  of  the  silver  ques- 
tion, which  so  recently  as  1896  was  convulsing  the  nation. 


SOCI-\LISM  IN  AMERICA  247 

Agriculture  are  to  be  trusted.  The  increase  in  cattle, 
other  than  milch  cows,  during  the  decade  from  1900  to 
1910,  was  more  than  76  per  cent,  while  the  population 
could  not  have  increased  more  than  10  per  cent.  Dur- 
ing the  same  period,  swine  increased  40  per  cent.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  increase  in  cattle  and  hogs  actually 
slaughtered  was  about  20  per  cent  during  the  same  period. 
Evidence  of  deliberate  manipulation  to  control  the  mar- 
ket could  hardly  be  plainer  than  is  afforded  by  these  offi- 
cial figures.  The  American  people  are  not  fools :  they 
know  that  no  Trust  or  combination  was  ever  formed  for 
any  other  purpose  than  the  prevention  of  competition 
and  the  increase  of  prices. 

It  is  inconceivable  that  Americans  will  be  long  content 
to  live  under  this  new  despotism,  even  though  it  is  ad- 
ministered, to  quote  the  now  famous  words  of  President 
Baer,  of  the  Reading  Railway,  by  "the  Christian  men  to 
whom  God,  in  his  infinite  wisdom,  has  given  the  control 
of  the  property  interests  of  the  country."  If  these  be 
Christian  men,  the  people  are  saying,  then  bring  on  your 
heathen  !  The  truth  is,  that  men  of  the  Baer  type  have 
got  God  and  the  devil  hopelessly  mixed  in  their  thinking. 
The  divine  right  of  kings,  after  desperate  and  prolonged 
struggles  that  wrecked  many  a  throne,  has  passed  into 
oblivion ;  the  divine  right  of  Capital,  though  still  be- 
lieved by  some  and  advocated  by  not  a  few,  is  doomed 
to  the  same  fate. 

IV 

But  is  Socialism  all  in  the  air  ?  some  will  ask.  Is  there 
nothing  more  definite  than  vague  hopes  and  aspirations, 
or  empty  academic  discussions  ?     What  do  American 


248  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

socialists  propose  to  do  —  sit  still  and  wait  for  the 
millennium  to  come  ?  Some  have  even  suspected  that 
socialists  are  opposed  to  practical  reforms,  lest  these 
should  ha\-e  a  tendency  to  lessen  the  existing  discon- 
tent ;  in  other  words,  their  poKcy  is  to  refuse  the  half 
loaf,  lest  its  acceptance  cost  the  remainder.  This,  if  it 
were  true  of  any  considerable  number  of  socialists,  would 
be  a  shortsighted  policy ;  for  there  is  a  motive  to  prog- 
ress at  least  as  strong  as  dissatisfaction,  and  that  is, 
satisfaction.  Discontent  might  conceivably  be  greatly 
lessened  by  legislation ;  but  might  not  a  people,  like 
an  individual,  be  so  well  pleased  by  one  step  in  advance, 
as  to  insist  on  taking  a  second,  and  a  third,  and  so  on 
indefinitely  ?  Throwing  a  bone  to  a  dog  may  not  satisfy 
his  appetite,  but  only  give  him  a  desire  for  more ;  and 
those  who  think  of  reforms  as  merely  a  means  of  occupying 
the  attention  of  a  dangerous  populace,  and  would  con- 
cede a  few  for  that  purpose,  may  discover  too  late  for 
their  own  comfort  that  they  have  whetted,  not  appeased, 
a  hunger. 

The  more  thoughtful  sociaUsts  of  America  respond  to 
the  challenge  to  propose  a  policy,  by  sketching  a  suffi- 
ciently definite  programme  of  immediate  reforms  to  be 
attempted.  Not  all  of  these  are  peculiarly  socialistic; 
some  are  favored  by  socialists  mainly  because  they  prom- 
ise to  smooth  the  way  for  the  advance  of  Socialism.  But, 
at  any  rate,  one  who  examines  the  list  will  no  longer  say 
of  SociaUsm  that  it  is  vague  and  indefinite.  These  prac- 
tical reforms  may  be  considered  under  three  separate 
heads. 

One  class  of  reforms  demanded  may  be  called  political. 
In  a  genuine  democracy,  the  laws  must  reflect  the  popu- 


SOCIALISM   IN  AMERICA  249 

lar  will.  But  our  experience  with  representative  govern- 
ment has  proved  beyond  a  doubt  that  representatives  do 
not  represent,  that  the  will  of  the  people  is  as  often 
thwarted  as  executed  in  legislation.  Shall  not  the  people 
themselves  be  permitted  to  decide  whether  an  important 
measure  shall  or  shall  not  be  law  ?  Their  right  to  decide 
is  recognized  in  the  matter  of  amending  the  fundamental 
law,  the  constitution ;  why  should  it  not  be  recognized 
in  statute  law  ?  This  is  the  referendum^  or  submission 
to  popular  vote  of  all  important  statutes,  or  of  any  stat- 
ute that  a  certain  proportion  of  the  voters  by  petition 
demand  to  have  submitted.  Then,  too,  in  a  genuine 
democracy,  the  people  must  have  the  power  not  only  to 
prevent  the  legislation  to  which  they  are  opposed,  but 
to  secure  the  legislation  that  they  desire.  Our  so-called 
representatives  now  defeat  the  popular  desire  by  the 
simple  expedient  of  promising  laws  before  election,  and 
doing  nothing  after  election  to  procure  their  enactment. 
Giving  the  people  this  power  is  the  initiative,  the  right  of 
the  people  to  say  at  any  regular  election,  that  a  certain 
statute  shall  be  enacted  by  the  legislature.  And  then 
supposing  the  faithless  representatives  still  fail  to  fulfil 
their  pledges,  or  any  officer  elected  by  the  people  is  de- 
linquent in  his  duty  ?  One  more  weapon  it  is  proposed 
to  put  into  the  hands  of  the  people,  the  recall,^  so  that  if  a 
man  chosen  by  the  people  to  do  their  will  turns  out  at  any 
stage  of  his  service  to  be  a  thief  or  a  "crook"  or  a  traitor, 
the  same  people  who  voted  him  into  office  may  vote  him 
out  again,  and  at  once,  instead  of  being  compelled  as 

'  The  first  case  of  the  successful  use  of  the  "recall"  occurred  in  Seattle, 
Wash.,  where  the  mayor  was  removed  in  February,  1911,  for  incompe- 
tence, abuse  of  the  appointive  power,  and  failure  to  enforce  the  laws. 


250  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

now  to  wait  until  he  has  served  his  full  term,  and  replace 
him  with  a  man  who  may  prove  to  be  no  better. 

Some  of  our  States  have  already  adopted  one  or  more 
of  these  methods,  and  a  considerable  number  are  pledged 
to  give  them  a  trial. ^  They  have  not  yet  had  a  sufficient 
trial  to  determine  their  value  in  promoting  a  pure  democ- 
racy; and  from  Switzerland,  where  they  originated, 
comes  conflicting  testimony  as  to  their  efficiency.  Such 
political  reforms  are,  in  any  case,  rather  the  necessary 
preliminaries  to  Socialism,  than  Socialism  itself.  Polit- 
ical democracy  once  attained,  social  democracy  will 
follow  as  fast  as  the  people  are  educated  to  demand  it. 
This  is  the  chief  reason  why  these  political  reforms  are 
made  part  of  the  socialistic  programme. 

A  second  series  of  reforms  might  be  classified  as  fiscal. 
Socialists  demand  the  abolition  of  all  indirect  taxes. 
Many  who  are  not  socialists  admit  that  there  are  strong 
reasons  in  favor  of  direct  taxes.  If  citizens  knew  exactly 
what  they  were  paying  for  the  support  of  government,  and 
knew  when  they  were  paying  it,  they  would  have  a  strong 
motive  to  enforce  honesty  and  economy  in  governmental 
affairs.  The  favorite  argument  for  indirect  taxes  is, 
that  ''people  do  not  feel  them,"  but  that  is  really  the 
strongest  argument  against  them.  A  tax  ought  to  be 
felt.     Indirect  taxes  make  it  easy  to  deceive  the  citizen 

^  Up  to  the  close  of  19 10  the  status  of  these  reforms  was  as  follows: 
Maine,  Missouri,  Arkansas,  Oklahoma,  South  Dakota,  Nevada,  Oregon, 
and  Montana  have  the  initiative  and  referendum  in  their  constitutions. 
Both  reforms  are  pledged  by  both  parties  in  Nebraska,  Wisconsin,  Illinois, 
Colorado,  California,  North  Dakota,  Kansas,  Massachusetts,  and  are 
therefore  virtually  adopted  by  those  States.  One  party  has  pledged  them 
in  Idaho,  Wyoming,  Washington,  Utah,  Minnesota,  Iowa,  and  Ohio,  and 
in  these  States  their  fate  may  be  said  to  be  uncertain. 


SOCIALISM   IN  AMERICA  251 

as  to  the  cost  of  government,  and  so  lessen  his  scrutiny 
of  expenditures.  They  are  the  stronghold  of  all  sorts 
of  corruption.  Moreover,  being  taxes  on  consumption, 
they  fall  most  heavily  on  the  small  homes,  on  the  people 
least  able  to  bear  them,  and  thus  violate  the  fundamental 
principle  of  taxation,  that  it  should  be  proportioned  to 
ability  to  pay.  No  iniquity  of  a  protective  tariff  is  so 
great  as  this ;  what  it  may  accomphsh  in  the  fostering 
of  Trusts  is  a  mere  bagatelle  by  comparison  with  this 
wholesale  plundering  of  the  poor. 

Socialists  would  collect  all  revenues  for  common  ex- 
penses by  three  kinds  of  direct  taxes :  a  poll  tax,  a  pro- 
gressive income  tax,  and  a  progressive  inheritance  tax. 
Such  a  fiscal  policy  would  lay  the  burden  of  government 
on  the  people  who  are  best  able  to  bear  it,  by  taxing  men 
in  proportion  to  their  ability  to  pay  and  not  in  proportion 
to  their  necessity  to  consume.  Socialists  do  not  favor 
the  Henry  George  idea  of  a  single  tax,  levied  on  land, 
save  as  a  temporary  expedient.  This  is  because,  in  their 
view,  rent  is  one  form  of  exploitation  of  the  laborer  that 
Socialism  looks  forward  to  abolishing ;  and  so  a  system 
of  taxation  based  on  the  rental  value  of  land  could  only 
be  temporary,  and  a  mere  amelioration  of  existing  evils, 
not  a  permanent  cure.  Let  no  one  who  has  not  given 
much  study  to  the  question  reply  to  these  proposals  that 
the  revenue  to  be  reasonably  expected  from  these  three 
sources  would  be  inadequate ;  any  one  who  has  studied 
the  matter  will  be  in  no  danger  of  making  such  reply.^ 

*  Those  who  are  fond  of  mathematical  computations  may  see  the  work- 
ing out  of  a  scheme  for  a  progressive  inheritance  tax,  and  a  demonstration 
of  its  extreme  fruitfulness  of  revenue,  as  well  as  its  inevitable  effect  on 
social  inequalities,  in  Newton  Mann's  "Import  and  Outlook  of  Social- 
ism," p.  130  et  seq. 


252  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

There  is  no  question  as  to  the  effectiveness  of  the  taxes, 
or  as  to  their  incidence.  It  has  not  escaped  the  notice 
of  any  reader,  probably,  that  the  rich  and  well-to-do 
object  strenuously  to  an  income  tax,  which  shows  pre- 
cisely where  that  shoe  would  pinch.  The  same  people 
object  to  the  progressive  inheritance  tax  that  it  is  con- 
fiscation. 

The  socialist  would  greatly  diminish  the  necessity  of 
taxes  by  the  immediate  abolition  of  all  standing  armies 
and  navies.  These  armaments,  he  believes,  have  grown 
out  of  the  capitalistic  system,  which  inevitably  leads  to 
clashes  between  nations.  With  the  coming  of  Socialism 
and  the  disappearance  of  private  capital,  the  motive 
for  wars  will  disappear,  and  the  need  of  armaments  with 
it.  It  may  be  said  in  passing  that  this  contention  of 
socialists  as  to  the  capitalistic  origin  of  all  wars  is  not 
wholly  convincing  as  a  historical  generaKzation,  and  this 
defect  throws  some  doubt  on  the  prophecy  that  wars 
will  disappear  with  private  capital.  Why  do  savage 
tribes  fight  ? 

The  third  class  of  reforms  urged  by  socialists  are  eco- 
nomic, and  all  have  to  do  with  some  method  of  imme- 
diately improving  the  conditions  of  industrial  and  social 
life.  The  moral  necessity  of  such  reforms,  as  well  as  the 
economic,  must  be  admitted.  There  is  much  force  in  the 
contention  of  socialist  writers  that  for  the  average  man 
at  least,  experience  shows  it  is  not  enough  for  him  to  have 
the  will  to  be  good  —  he  must  have  a  fair  opportunity 
also.  And  while  it  would  doubtless  not  be  true  to  say 
of  the  average  man  that  at  present  he  has  no  opportunity 
to  be  good,  it  is  well  within  the  facts  to  say  that  he 
has  far  less  than  he  should  have,  far  less  than  he  needs. 


SOCIALISM  IN  AMERICA  253 

This  is  not  to  assent  to  the  argument  of  Bax,  the  Eng- 
lish sociaHst,  in  his  "Ethics  of  Socialism,"  that  men  can 
cultivate  the  highest  ideals  only  when  their  bodies  are 
comfortable;  that  is,  well  fed,  well  clothed,  and  well 
housed.  Virtue,  he  urges,  cannot  be  expected  in  those 
who  are  struggKng  for  existence.  To  which  the  reply  is, 
that  all  depends  on  who  is  strugghng.  The  whole  his- 
tory of  asceticism,  in  all  ages  and  religions,  teaches  that 
the  highest  ideals  of  conduct  and  character  may  be 
successfully  cultivated,  independent  of  bodily  comfort.^ 
Not  merely  in  Christianity,  but  in  many  religions,  it  has 
been  repeatedly  demonstrated  that  the  higher  life  is  com- 
patible with  an  endurance  of  hunger,  cold,  and  squalor, 
compared  to  which  the  poverty  of  a  New  York  or  London 
slum  is  luxury.  Nay,  millions  of  men  believe  to-day, 
mistakenly  though  firmly,  that  this  is  the  only  way  by 
which  the  highest  spiritual  life  may  be  attained.  It  is 
not  because  the  working-classes  feel  the  pinch  of  want 
that  they  are  not  more  spiritual.  There  is  no  man  to-day 
that  labors  with  his  hands,  who  is  so  poorly  clothed  and 
fed  as  were  Bernard  of  Clairvaux  and  Francis  of  Assisi. 

But  let  us  ask  what  are  the  actual  betterments  pro- 
posed for  the  working-man,  and  return  later  to  the  spir- 
itual question.  A  series  of  measures  comprised  under 
the  general  head  of  factor^'  reform  are  proposed  for  imme- 
diate enactment :  such  as  shorter  hours  of  work  wherever 
possible ;  more  effective  restriction  of  child  labor ;  better 
protection  of  women  laborers,  especially  prohibition  of 
excessively  long  hours ;  better  lighting,  ventilation,  and 
sanitation  of  factories  and  workshops.     The  better  hous- 

'  It  is  only  fair  to  Bax  to  add  that  he  attempts  to  break  the  force  of 
this  testimony  of  asceticism,  but  without  avail  —  it  is  fatal  to  his  theory. 


254  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

ing  of  laborers  is  another  measure  of  reform  demanded. 
Surely  all  these  are  sufficiently  definite  and  practical,  and 
without  exception,  they  appeal  to  the  general  sense  of 
justice  of  the  people  at  large.  Here  is  a  field  in  which 
Socialism  and  Christian  philanthropy  may  find  common 
ground  of  activity,  without  first  settling  or  even  trying 
to  settle  the  philosophy  of  the  social  system.  It  is  well 
to  note  again,  however,  that  the  socialist  looks  on  these 
measures  as  merely  palliative,  not  as  constituting  sub- 
stantial relief  of  the  grievance  of  the  working-classes. 

It  is  also  worth  noting  that  some  of  these  things  have 
already  been  attempted,  and  even  partially  achieved,  in 
certain  States  of  the  Union,  not  as  a  step  towards  Social- 
ism, but  as  things  just  and  wise  in  themselves.  Laws 
against  child  labor  have  been  enacted  in  many  States,  and 
are  vigorously  pressed  in  the  South  at  the  present  time. 
Oregon  has  passed  a  statute  forbidding  the  employm.ent 
of  women  more  than  ten  hours  a  day,  and  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States  has  sustained  it  as  constitu- 
tional, A  similar  statute  has  been  passed  in  Illinois,  but 
the  Circuit  Court  of  Cook  County  granted  an  injunction 
against  its  enforcement.  The  Illinois  Manufacturers 
Association  is  aiding  the  efforts  of  individual  employers 
to  nullify  the  law,  on  the  ground  that  the  sacred  individual 
right  to  freedom  of  contract  is  infringed  by  it.  England 
and  some  of  the  continental  States  of  Europe  are  far  in 
advance  of  the  United  States  in  protecting  women  from 
overwork,  and  so  protecting  the  public  health.^ 

^  Not  long  ago  ex-President  Theodore  Roosevelt  committed  himself  to 
this  public  statement:  "In  legislation  and  in  our  use  of  safety  devices 
for  the  protection  of  workmen,  we  are  far  behind  European  peoples,  and 
in  consequence,  in  the  United  States,  the  casualties  attendant  upon 
peaceful  industries  exceed  those  which  would  happen  under  great  per- 


SOCIALISM  IN  AMERICA  255 

Certain  Christian  moralists,  like  Professor  Flint  in  his 
book  on  "Socialism,"  are  inclined  to  disparage  all  such 
remedial  measures,  on  the  ground  that  "the  great  bulk 
of  human  misery  is  due,  not  to  social  arrangements,  but 
to  personal  vices."  It  is  the  old  theological  notion,  per- 
sisting in  religious  circles,  that  everything  out  of  joint 
in  the  social  system  is  to  be  charged  up  to  an  indefinite 
and  all-pervasive  agency  known  as  "sin."  Sin  in  the 
abstract  never  harms  society ;  it  is  when  some  definite 
person  commits  a  precise  evil  act  that  harm  is  done  to 
himself  and  others.  And  so  the  socialist  is  prone  to  go 
to  the  opposite  extreme,  and  make  the  social  order  re- 
sponsible for  all  forms  of  wrong-doing,  almost  to  the 
elimination  of  personal  agency  and  personal  responsibility. 
To  men  like  Professor  Flint,  the  Wise  Man  spoke  the 
whole  truth  when  he  said  that  "the  destruction  of  the 
poor  is  their  poverty";  for  their  poverty  he  believed 
them  to  be  responsible,  and  from  it  all  might  escape  if 
they  would  be  virtuous,  industrious,  and  frugal.  The 
socialist  holds  that  poverty  grips  most  of  the  poor  with 
tentacles  from  which  they  cannot  free  themselves,  by 
which  they  are  dragged  down  to  disease  and  death,  and 
that  vice  is  largely  the  desperate  attempt  of  the  victims 
to  seek  some  temporary  relief  for  their  sufferings,  some 
compensation  for  their  misery. 

Probably  there  will  never  be  agreement  between  schools 
of  thought  so  fundamentally  opposed;  the  difference  is 
temperamental  in  part,  and  in  part  is  due  to  differences 

petual  war."  In  191 1  the  Court  of  Appeals  of  New  York  declared  un- 
constitutional a  statute  for  insurance  of  workmen  against  accidents,  care- 
fully drawn  by  some  of  the  best  legal  talent  of  the  State,  and  equally 
desired  by  emjiloycrs  and  employees,  on  the  ground  that  it  deprived  citi- 
zens of  property  without  due  process  of  law. 


256  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

of  experience  and  observation.  Many  who  once  agreed 
with  Dr.  Flint,  as  they  have  grown  older  and  presum- 
ably wiser,  and  at  any  rate  have  observed  more  widely 
for  themselves,  have  come  more  and  more  to  doubt  his 
contention.  Too  many  thoroughly  industrious,  tem- 
perate, honest,  thrifty  people  are  known  to  us,  people 
who  have  been  unable  by  a  lifetime  of  effort  to  rise  above 
poverty  and  have  at  times  been  reduced  to  real  distress, 
to  make  the  Flint  hypothesis  credible.  Such  people 
failed  of  independence  merely  because  they  lacked  the 
money-making  shrewdness,  not  to  say  unscrupulousness, 
and  for  no  other  discoverable  reason.  They  could  not 
or  would  not  successfully  exploit  their  fellows;  and,  in 
society  as  now  organized,  one  must  exploit  or  be  ex- 
ploited. 


American  politicians  and  newspapers  frequently  exhort 
the  people,  with  an  earnestness  httle  short  of  pathetic, 
not  to  abandon  their  democratic  inheritance  for  the 
jack-o'-lantern  of  Karl  Marx.  This  but  shows  how  blind 
our  political  leaders  and  teachers  are  to  the  actual  situa- 
tion, and  how  little  they  comprehend  the  ideals  and  aims 
of  the  socialist.  Socialists,  whether  followers  of  Marx 
or  otherwise,  do  not  propose  to  abandon  democracy,  but 
to  realize  it.  We  have  already  seen  how  American  demo- 
cratic theory  is  contradicted  by  industrial  fact;  we 
should  note  that  it  is  hardly  less  contradicted  by  political 
fact,  and  then  we  shall  understand  the  recent  growth  of 
a  socialistic  party  in  the  United  States.  We  have  always 
heard  that  we  live  in  a  democracy,  and  under  a  represen- 
tative form  of  government;    and  this  has  been  so  re- 


SOCL\LISM   IN  AMERICA  257 

iterated  that  we  no  more  dream  of  doubting  it  than  of 
doubting  that  we  live  in  the  Western  hemisphere  and  a 
temperate  climate.  But  if  we  lay  aside  political  clap- 
trap and  look  resolutely  and  candidly  at  facts,  not  the- 
ories, we  quickly  learn  that  we  are  living  under  the  least 
democratic  system  in  the  civilized  world,  outside  of 
Russia. 

Our  fathers,  who  made  the  constitutions  under  which 
we  live  and  try  to  do  business,  were  deeply  suspicious  of 
the  people ;  and  they  introduced  into  our  political  sys- 
tem a  number  of  ingenious  checks  and  balances  that 
should  prevent  the  popular  will  from  getting  itself  exe- 
cuted —  so  far  as  such  a  result  was  possible  in  a  state 
where  every  free  male  adult  was  a  voter.  The  people 
were  not  permitted  to  choose  a  President  directly,  but 
an  electoral  college  was  interposed  between  them  and  the 
executive  office.  We  have  overcome  this  barrier  to  the 
popular  will  by  our  extra-constitutional  device  of  a  nom- 
inating convention  and  the  reduction  of  the  electoral 
college  to  a  mere  register  of  the  popular  vote  by  states. 
But  it  is  still  possible,  under  this  clumsy  and  antiquated 
system,  for  a  President  to  be  elected  by  the  votes  of  a 
minority  of  the  people.  Is  that  representative  govern- 
ment? 

The  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  —  within 
certain  limits,  and  those  limits  mainly  defmed  by  itself 
—  is  the  highest  power  in  our  government :  above  the 
President,  above  the  Congress,  and,  of  course,  above  the 
governors  and  legislatures  of  the  several  States.  It  has 
the  power  to  annul  any  statute,  or  so  to  "interpret"  it 
as  to  give  a  meaning  never  intended  by  lawmakers, 
whether  enacted  by  State  or  Federal  legislative  body,  and 


258  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

few  years  pass  without  the  exercise  of  such  power.  In 
every  other  nation,  the  will  of  the  people,  expressed  in 
statute  law,  is  supreme;  in  our  "democratic"  country, 
the  will  of  the  people  does  not  obtain  if  five  men  in  Wash- 
ington say  Nay.  And  these  omnipotent  judges  are  to- 
tally irresponsible  to  the  people,  who  have  no  voice  in 
their  selection  and  can  do  nothing  to  secure  their  removal, 
since  the  Constitution  provides  that,  once  appointed, 
they  shall  serve  for  life  or  during  good  behavior.  In 
all  the  States,  also,  the  people  were  originally  not  suffered 
to  elect  their  judges ;  but  against  this  they  revolted,  and 
most  judges  are  now  elected  for  limited  terms,  though 
long.  Yet,  in  spite  of  this  reform,  the  most  important 
part  of  our  national  government,  the  judiciary,  is  an 
oligarchy  of  the  most  pronounced  type. 

The  Federal  Senate  does  not  represent  the  people ;  the 
exact  fact  is,  that  the  people  are  misrepresented  by  the 
Senate.  This,  not  merely  because  that  body  has  come 
to  consist  almost  wholly  of  plutocrats  and  their  willing 
tools,  but  from  the  very  constitution  of  the  Senate.  How 
ridiculous  to  call  a  legislative  house  representative,  even 
if  it  were  democratic,  to  which  twenty-five  States,  that 
have  one-sixth  of  the  entire  population,  send  fifty  out 
of  ninety-two  Senators  !  One-sixth  of  the  people  outvote 
the  other  five-sixths,  inevitably,  on  every  measure  pro- 
posed in  the  Senate.  This  is  an  evil  inseparable  from 
our  system,  and  incurable  except  by  constitutional  amend- 
ment, for  which  the  requisite  majority  of  States  can 
probably  never  be  secured,  because  these  twenty-five 
States  will  never  voluntarily  surrender  the  great  advan- 
tage thus  given  them.  But  the  fathers  made  the  matter 
still  worse  by  denying  to  the  people  the  right  to  elect 


SOCIALISM  IN  AMERICA  259 

Senators,  directing  the  legislatures  of  the  several  States 
to  perform  this  duty.  As  in  the  case  of  the  electoral 
college,  the  people  are  showing  themselves  resolved  to 
take  and  exercise  this  power  by  another  extra-constitu- 
tional device :  nominating  Senators  in  primaries  and 
securing  pledges  from  candidates  for  the  legislature  to 
vote  for  such  nominees.  In  this  way,  several  States  have 
already  established  the  election  of  Senators  by  popular 
vote,  and  the  Senate  is  in  fair  way  to  become  as  nearly 
a  representative  body  as  the  Constitution  will  permit. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  a  body,  not  representative,  and 
not  democratic,  should  have  fallen  under  the  domination 
of  Capitahsm,  and  that  60  per  cent  of  the  Senate  to-day 
is  composed  of  millionnaires  and  corporation  lawyers. 
But  it  is  surprising  that  in  the  House  of  Representatives, 
which  might  easily  be  made  both  representative  and 
democratic,  virtually  the  same  proportion  of  rich  men 
and  lawyers  should  be  found.  For  this  result  the  voters 
have  nobody  to  blame  but  themselves ;  the  remedy  is  in 
their  own  hands.  If  they  like  to  be  governed  by  laws 
enacted  by  such  representatives,  there  is  nothing  more 
to  be  said.  But  why  should  a  people  let  themselves  be 
persuaded  or  cozened  into  electing  representatives  of 
this  kind,  and  go  on  proudly  asserting  that  this  is  a 
democracy  ?  Why  should  they  send  capitalists  and  cor- 
poration lawyers  to  Washington  to  make  their  laws,  and 
then  marvel  that  legislation  for  the  conservation  of  the 
people's  rights  and  interests  is  so  hard  to  procure  ?  The 
real  marvel  should  be  that  popular  legislation  is  not 
altogether  impossible. 

And  this  is  to  take  no  account  of  the  fact  that  for  many 
years  past  the  House  of  Representatives  has  been  pre- 


26o  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

sided  over  by  a  speaker  as  autocratic  as  a  Tsar,  and  quite 
as  powerful,  though  himself  controlled  by  a  capitalistic 
clique,  —  a  man  to  whom  the  President  himself  must 
come,  hat  in  hand  and  with  bated  breath,  if  he  would 
have  any  law  enacted  in  which  he  happens  to  be  especially 
interested. 

Upon  what  meat  doth  this  our  Caesar  feed, 
That  he  is  grown  so  great  ? 

Between  our  fathers'  uneasy  suspicion  of  what  we  might 
do,  and  what  in  our  folly  we  have  actually  done,  we,  the 
American  people,  find  ourselves  tied  like  Gulliver  in 
Lilliput,  and  as  little  able  as  he  to  help  ourselves  or  pun- 
ish our  foes. 

In  no  other  country  where  the  rights  of  the  people  are 
recognized  at  all,  are  the  rights  and  interests  of  the  peo- 
ple less  protected ;  in  no  other  country  is  the  will  of  the 
people  so  nearly  a  negligible  quantity.  And  Americans 
are  themselves  at  fault,  because  they  are  so  unintelligent 
in  political  affairs.  They  wilfully  refuse  to  see  themselves 
and  their  political  institutions  as  they  are,  but  insist  on 
living  in  a  political  fool's  paradise,  bhnding  themselves 
to  the  realities  and  encouraging  themselves  in  compla- 
cence by  a  parrot-repetition  of  venerable  phrases  and 
theories ;  and  each  year  they  meekly  step  up  to  the  polls 
and  vote  to  continue  this  order  of  things,  which  they 
have  the  power  to  end  any  day  they  choose.  Apparently 
they  will  never  be  convinced,  save  by  bitter  experience, 
of  the  error  of  their  ways,  and  they  are  likely  to  have 
plenty  of  experience.  They  are  beginning  to  feel  severely 
the  pinch  of  the  purse,  yet  they  still  refuse  to  open  their 
eyes.     Very  well,  one  is  inclined  to  say,  let  them  feel; 


SOCIALISM   IN  AMERICA  261 

it  is  good  for  their  souls.  By  and  by,  when  they  have 
been  squeezed  hard  enough,  until  they  have  been  made 
to  shed  not  only  tears  but  blood,  they  will  recognize  the 
true  source  of  their  evils  and  begin  in  earnest  to  abate 
them. 

Slowest  of  all  to  see  how  they  have  been  exploited  by 
the  politician,  as  well  as  by  the  capitalist,  have  been  the 
workmen  of  America.  Have  they  no  perception,  have 
they  no  logic,  have  they  no  sense?  Will  they  permit 
themselves  forever  to  be  treated  as  dumb,  driven  cattle 
by  political  bosses  ?  Will  they  continue  to  believe  that 
a  high  tariff  is  maintained  for  their  benefit,  when  they 
know  well  that  the  interest  of  capitalists  is  to  make  wages 
as  low  as  possible?  Will  they  continue  to  believe  that 
the  interest  in  high  wages  for  them,  which  employers 
manifest  so  touchingly  just  before  each  important  elec- 
tion, is  consistent  with  the  constant  stream  of  cheap  labor 
kept  pouring  into  this  country  by  capitalists,  mostly  in 
direct  and  shameful  violation  of  the  immigration  laws  ? 
One  hardly  knows  which  is  the  more  culpable,  the  hypoc- 
risy of  the  capitalists  or  the  gullibility  of  the  workmen ; 
but  the  latter  is  beyond  controversy  the  more  surprising, 
and  the  more  shameful.  For  "there's  a  reason"  for  the 
attitude  of  the  capitalist ;  the  conduct  of  the  workmen  is 
the  essence  of  unreason. 

It  was  a  dim  appreciation  of  some  of  these  facts,  to- 
gether with  the  disillusionment  of  those  who  had  hoped 
for  a  real  betterment  of  the  workers'  condition,  that  led 
to  the  organization  of  the  Working-men's  Party  in  1876. 
The  following  year  the  name  was  changed  to  the  Socialist 
Labor  Party.  Before  this  time  the  political  efforts  of 
working-men  in  the  direction  of  Socialism  have  only  a 


262  SOCIALISM  AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

historic  interest,  and  little  even  of  that.  For  twenty 
years  the  Socialist  Labor  Party  was  the  dominant  factor 
in  such  progress  as  was  made,  a  progress  much  limited 
by  the  fact  that  the  leaders  of  the  movement,  as  well  as 
most  of  the  followers,  were  of  foreign  birth  and  educa- 
tion. The  result  was  naturally  a  small  party,  with  little 
influence  and  fewer  votes.  The  difficulty  of  making  an 
advance  was  soon  apparent,  and  every  method  was  tried 
of  enlisting  the  interest  of  native  American  working-men. 
So  little  success  rewarded  these  efforts  for  a  time  that  the 
general  propaganda  was  practically  abandoned  in  favor 
of  an  attempt  to  win  over  the  trades-unions.  The  latter, 
however,  had  been  so  sedulously  instructed  that  it  was 
their  duty  to  ''keep  out  of  politics,"  that  this  work  made 
exceedingly  slow  progress.  Even  now,  some  of  the  most 
trusted  leaders  of  the  working-men  cling  to  this  policy 
of  aloofness  from  politics  —  men  like  Samuel  Gompers 
—  regardless  of  the  teaching  of  experience. 

Some  humorist  has  restated  an  old  proverb  in  these 
terms :  ''Experience  keeps  a  dear  school,  but  it  delivers 
the  goods."  Not  always;  some  people  cannot  be 
taught,  even  by  experience.  In  the  struggle  of  unionism 
against  capitalism,  unionism  seems  certain  to  be  defeated 
as  long  as  the  struggle  is  economic  and  financial  only. 
When  labor  was  first  organized  and  capital  was  unorgan- 
ized, it  steadily  gained,  even  though  it  sometimes  sus- 
tained notable  defeat.  When  capital  became  organized, 
labor  was  able  to  win  only  in  a  small  way  and  under 
specially  favoring  circumstances.  Between  1881  and 
1900  there  were  22,793  strikes,  big  and  little,  of  which 
50.77  per  cent  were  successful,  while  13.04  per  cent  par- 
tially succeeded,  and  36.19  wholly  failed.     These,  which 


SOCL\LISM  IN  AMERICA  263 

are  official  figures  furnished  by  the  Bureau  of  Labor,  seem 
at  first  sight  to  be  quite  favorable  to  labor.  But  the 
successful  strikes  were  all  small  affairs.  The  great  strikes 
during  that  period,  where  large  numbers  of  well-organized 
men  were  arrayed  against  large  aggregations  of  capital, 
were  disastrous  failures.  The  strike  on  the  Gould  sys- 
tem of  railways,  in  1885,  failed.  The  great  strike  of 
telegrap'iers  against  the  Western  Union,  in  1883,  failed. 
The  steel  workers'  strike  at  Homestead,  in  1892,  failed. 
The  switchmen's  strike  at  Buffalo,  in  August  of  the  same 
year,  failed.  The  carworkers'  strike  at  Pullman,  in  1884, 
failed.  The  great  coal  strike,  of  1902,  was  saved  from 
failure  only  by  the  interposition  of  President  Roosevelt. 
There  was  one  success  in  the  great  strikes  during  all  this 
time,  that  on  the  Great  Northern  Railroad,  in  1884. 

The  reason  for  this  failure  of  working-men  is  that 
they  were,  in  all  these  cases,  accepting  the  present  in- 
dustrial order  and  fighting  Capitalism  on  its  own  ground, 
but  with  greatly  inferior  weapons.  Working-men  are 
surprised  and  enraged  whenever  they  are  defeated  in  a 
great  strike ;  what  should  surprise  them  is  that  they  ever 
win.  They  are  joining  in  the  selfish  scramble  of  the 
competitive  system,  with  the  odds  greatly  against  them. 
They  pit  themselves  at  the  swill-tub  against  hogs  who 
have  all  the  advantage  of  long  possession,  of  being  strong 
and  well-fed,  and  of  knowing  all  the  tricks  of  the  game, 
while  they  are  weak,  hungry,  ignorant,  and  on  the  out- 
side. The  unions  have  been  meeting  competition  with 
competition,  monopoly  with  monopoly,  tyranny  with  the 
boycott.  It  is  war  to  the  knife,  and  the  knife  up  to  the 
hilt,  with  Vae  victis  as  the  motto.  The  unions  sometimes 
win  a  battle ;  they  have  never  won  a  campaign. 


264  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

Yet,  impervious  to  the  lessons  of  experience,  the  unions 
go  on  in  the  same  old  way,  challenging  capital  to  a  con- 
flict where  capital  is  invincible,  save  through  its  own 
blunders,  and  refusing  to  light  capital  where  it  is  vulner- 
able, at  the  ballot  box.  In  the  ballot,  the  American 
working-man  has  a  weapon  that  will  insure  him  victory, 
whenever  he  has  intelligence  enough  to  use  it.  Capital- 
ism is  not  afraid  of  strikes  ;  it  dreads  the  ballot,  and  does 
everything  in  its  power  to  corrupt  the  suffrage  and  hin- 
der the  expression  of  the  people's  will.  For  Capitalism 
understands  thoroughly  what  the  working-man  has  never 
yet  been  able  to  comprehend,  the  power  of  the  ballot. 
Capitahsm  asks  nothing  better  than  the  continuance 
of  the  Gompers  ideas  and  the  Gompers  policy.  For 
that  means,  in  the  long  run,  the  defeat  of  the  working-men 
who  are  morally  certain  to  lose  as  often  as  they  measure 
strength  with  capital  in  a  great  industrial  contest. 

But  to  return  to  our  Social  Labor  Party.  Its  greatest 
and  most  dangerous  antagonist  proved  to  be  the  Revolu- 
tionary Socialist  Party,  founded  by  John  Most,  in  1881. 
This  was  really  an  anarchist  organization,  as  its  avowed 
principles  showed,  and  Anarchy,  though  often  confounded 
with  Socialism,  has  Httle  resemblance  to  it  —  is  really 
its  antipodes.  The  Haymarket  affair  in  Chicago,  in 
May,  1886,  showed  what  Anarchy  really  meant  and 
ended  its  open  propagation  for  many  years.  Just  as  the 
Socialist  Labor  Party  was  rallying  from  this  check,  it 
was  diverted  from  its  proper  purpose  by  the  movement 
in  New  York  City  that  resulted  in  the  campaign  of 
Henry  George  for  mayor.  Mr.  George  was  not  a  social- 
ist, except  as  to  private  property  in  land.  He  saw  in  the 
appropriation  of  land  to  private  ownership  the  funda- 


SOCIALISM  IN  AMERICA  265 

mental  factor  in  social  wrongs,  and  rent  seemed  to  him 
the  most  serious  form  of  the  exploitation  of  the  poor  by 
the  rich.  He  was  blind  to  the  at-least-equal  evil  of 
private  ownership  of  tools  and  machinery,  the  factory 
system,  nor  did  he  see  that  interest  and  profit  are  as 
deadly  means  of  exploitation  as  rent.  But  he  favored 
socialization  of  land,  through  the  confiscation  of  rent  in 
the  form  of  taxation,  at  the  same  time  refusing  to  con- 
sider the  remedy  of  socializing  the  other  means  of  pro- 
duction. In  other  words,  George  advocated  a  strictly 
limited  form  of  Socialism,  while  the  Socialist  Labor 
Party  stood  for  a  more  thoroughgoing  Socialism.  George 
would  abolish  the  landlords,  but  continue  the  capitalist, 
thus  affording  the  exploited  but  a  partial  measure  of 
relief. 

But,  since  he  did  advocate  some  relief,  and  since  his 
candidacy  offered  the  working-men  a  good  opportunity 
to  "stand  up  and  be  counted,"  the  Socialist  Labor  Party 
gave  him  a  hearty  support.  He  was  defeated,  possibly 
by  the  fraudulent  counting  of  the  vote,  as  his  followers 
alleged,  and  this  result  gave  the  Socialist  Labor  Party 
a  severe  check.  Nevertheless,  they  had  the  courage  to 
nominate  a  Presidential  ticket  in  1892,  and  polled 
21,512  votes,  which  increased  in  1896  to  36,275,  and  in 
1898  to  82,204.  Several  parties  of  socialists,  under 
various  names,  have  since  then  risen  and  declined,  but 
the  greatest  success  has  been  won  by  the  Socialist  Party, 
v/hich  came  to  the  front  in  1901,  and  polled  409,230  votes 
in  1904,  and420,793  in  1908.  At  recent  elections  immense 
gains  have  been  made  by  socialists  in  the  Middle  West. 
In  1904  five  socialists  were  elected  to  the  Wisconsin  legis- 
lature, and  two  in  Illinois.     In  the  spring  of  the  same 


266  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

year,  socialists  elected  nine  aldermen  in  Milwaukee,  and 
in  1910  they  elected  a  mayor,  who  has  accomplished  the 
apparently  impossible  feat  of  enforcing  the  law  against 
the  saloons  and  other  haunts  of  vice  in  that  city.  Twelve 
other  cities  in  191 1  elected  socialist  mayors. 

These  facts  give  some  slight  indication  of  what  the 
working-men  might  accomplish,  if  they  had  but  the  prac- 
tical sense  to  unite  and  vote  for  their  own  interests,  in- 
stead of  combining  to  support  parties  controlled  by  capi- 
tal, as  they  have  thus  far  continued  to  do.  When  they 
show  as  much  political  insight,  and  as  much  class  solidar- 
ity, as  the  English  working-men  are  beginning  to  show, 
they  will  receive  from  pohticians  equal  respect.  So 
long  as  the  capitalists,  and  their  political  lenchmen, 
can  continue  to  hoodwink  and  deceive  the  American 
working-men,  so  long  will  working-men  and  their  interests 
be  treated  by  every  politician  with  the  contempt  that  they 
will  deserve. 

There  are,  however,  other  criteria  by  which  the  prog- 
ress of  Socialism  should  be  judged,  besides  the  number 
of  votes  polled  by  its  candidates.  There  are  over  fifty 
newspapers  and  periodicals  published  in  the  interests  of 
Socialism,  of  which  half  are  printed  in  foreign  languages. 
Many  of  the  organs  of  trade-unions  are  now  giving  at 
least  a  qualified  approval  to  Socialism  —  teaching  the 
principles,  though  holding  aloof  from  the  organization. 
A  considerable  native  literature  of  Socialism  in  book 
form  also  exists,  and  is  increasing  in  volume  from  year 
to  year.  While  the  foreign-born  element  is  still  strong 
in  the  ranks,  perhaps  a  numerical  majority,  the  influen- 
tial leaders  are  now  of  American  birth  —  men  of  intelli- 
gence and  broad  education.     Socialism  is  winning  every 


SOCIALISM  IN  AMERICA  267 

year  recruits  among  the  thoughtful  and  scholarly  class 
of  Americans,  to  whom  it  becomes  increasingly  plain 
that  the  capitalistic  system  is  as  much  their  enemy  as 
it  is  the  enemy  of  the  manual  worker.  The  ethical 
appeal  of  Socialism  affects  strongly  the  professional  class, 
who  do  not  respond  readily  to  motives  of  personal  or 
class  interest.  It  thus  far  appeals  least  to  those  whom  it 
promises  most.  There  is  no  real  solidarity  among  work- 
ing-men ;  they  are  divided  into  a  multitude  of  cliques,  with 
confUcting  aims ;  and  underneath  their  cant  of  brother- 
hood is  a  bitter  and  selfish  strife  of  the  cliques.  Only  a 
common  enemy  and  a  common  danger  produces  even  a 
semblance  of  union  among  them. 

Nor  has  Socialism  thus  far  made  any  noteworthy 
progress  among  the  other  class  that  would  be  m.ost 
affected  by  it,  the  farmers.  Tillers  of  the  soil  have  al- 
ways been  a  conservative  class,  and  they  need  to  be  con- 
vinced that  the  social  revolution  is  for  their  benefit,  and 
that  their  interests  would  be  protected.  There  is  little 
prospect  of  a  successful  revolution  without  their  coop- 
eration ;  their  mere  passive  resistance,  as  Jaures  has 
pointed  out,  would  be  enough  to  defeat  such  a  revolution. 
Ultimate  socialization  of  the  land  is  part  of  any  socialistic 
programme ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  the  reorganiza- 
tion of  the  social  system  need  begin  at  that  point.  It 
would  not  be  necessary,  and,  as  a  practical  measure,  it 
would  be  manifestly  unwise,  to  attempt  the  complete 
socialization  of  land  at  first;  but  the  unearned  incre- 
ment should  be  taken  for  the  community  that  has  pro- 
duced it,  as  one  of  the  first  measures  of  socialistic  advance. 
Land  would  then  have  value  merely  for  occupation  and 
use,  and  this  would  be  greatly  to  the  advantage  of  the 


268  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

farmer  class.  French  and  German  socialists  are  making 
more  effort  than  English  or  American  to  convince  the 
small  proprietor  that  the  coming  social  revolution  will 
do  him  good,  not  harm  —  that  socialization  of  the  land 
means  the  expropriation  of  the  large  proprietor,  not  the 
small.  Far  from  depriving  the  peasant  proprietor  or 
small  farmer  of  his  land,  socialists  propose  to  guarantee 
him  its  possession.  American  socialists  must  follow  in 
this  line,  for  their  cause  is  hopeless  if  they  provoke  the 
antagonism  of  the  farmer.  He  is  not  as  yet  antagonistic, 
but  neither  has  his  support  been  secured. 

The  future  of  Socialism  in  Am>irica  depends,  apart 
from  irresistible  forces  of  evolution,  on  an  intelligent  and 
persistent  propaganda.  Socialists  assure  us  that  the 
interests  of  all  the  people,  except  about  two  hundred 
thousand  proprietors  and  hangers-on,  are  bound  up  with 
the  success  of  the  revolution.  It  ought,  therefore,  to  be 
comparatively  easy  to  win  the  vast  majority  of  the  people 
to  a  programme  so  obviously  in  their  interest.  So  long 
as  only  a  small  minority  hold  the  ideas  of  Socialism,  no 
progress  can  be  expected  save  by  the  slow  method  of 
evolution ;  a  successful  revolution,  no  matter  how  grad- 
ual and  peaceful,  must  have  behind  it  the  will  of  the 
majority.  Socialism  is  gaining  converts  rapidly;  it 
is  "in  the  air."  What  a  few  thought  yesterday,  the 
world  thinks  to-day.  And  what  the  world  thinks  to-day, 
is  what  the  world  will  do  to-morrow. 


VIII 

THE   IDEALS    OF    SOCIALISM  — ARE   THEY 
PRACTICABLE  ? 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Sympathetic  and  favorable  expositions :  — 
Thompson,  Constructive  Programme  of  Socialism.     Milwaukee, 

1908. 
Mann,  Import  and  Outlook  of  Socialism.     Boston,  igio. 
HiLLQUiT,  Socialism  in  Theory  and  Practice.     New  York,  1909. 
Bellamy,  Looking  Backward.     Boston,  1888. 
Bax,  Ethics  of  Socialism,  "Social  Science  Series,"  1907. 

,  Religion  of  Socialism,  ib.     1888. 

Bebel,  Woman  under  Socialism.     New  York,  1910. 

RusKiN,  Unto  this  Last. 

Ghent,  Mass  and  Class.    New  York,  1905. 

Critical  and  hostile  :  — 
Wilson,  The  Menace  of  Socialism.    New  York,  1909. 
Mallock,  a  Critical  Examination  of  Socialism.     New  York,  1907. 
The  Case  against  Socialism :  a  Handbook  for  Speakers  and  Can- 
didates.   New  York,  1909. 
Le  Rossignol,  Orthodox  Socialism :    a  Criticism.    New  York, 
1907. 

Books  on  related  topics :  — 
Koren,  Economic  Aspects  of  the  Liquor  Problem.    Boston,  1889. 
Hopkins,  Wealth  and  Waste.    New  York,  1902. 
Warner,  Social  Welfare  and  the  Liquor  Problem.    New  York, 

1909. 
Reeve,  The  Cost  of  Competition.     New  York,  1906. 
Gilman,  Women  and  Economics.    New  York,  1902. 


VIII 

THE  IDEALS   OF   SOCIALISM  —  ARE   THEY  PRACTICABLE? 


Social  discontent,  properly  understood,  is  a  symptom 
of  social  health,  an  index  of  the  progress  of  mankind. 
The  man  of  to-day  is  a  larger  man  than  the  man  of  fifty 
years  ago ;  he  is  more  intelhgent,  he  is  more  aspiring ; 
as  a  member  of  a  more  complex  society,  he  has  more  wants 
and  is  dissatisfied  with  a  standard  of  living  that  would 
have  more  than  satisfied  his  grandfather.  What  makes 
his  discontent  acute  is  his  perception  of  the  fact  that, 
under  present  industrial  conditions,  no  effort  of  his  can 
make  possible  to  the  average  man  the  reasonable  satis- 
faction of  his  new  w^ants.  Our  newspaper  humorists 
jest  at  the  man  who  has  "champagne  tastes  and  a  beer 
income,"  but  the  jocular  phrase  aptly  describes  the 
larger  part  of  society  to-day  —  all,  in  fact,  but  those 
who  have  the  wealth  to  buy  the  "champagne." 

The  progress  of  civilization  has  consisted  in  the  attain- 
ment of  greater  liberty,  the  successful  effort  of  man  to 
free  himself  from  the  restraints  by  which  he  finds  himself 
surrounded  —  restraints  of  physical  environment,  re- 
straints from  his  fellows,  restraints  of  ignorance.  He  has 
progressed  in  civilization  as  he  has  conquered  nature, 
established  social  order,  and  gained  knowledge.  With 
the  conquest  of  nature  has  come  leisure,  order  has  given 

271 


272  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

security,  knowledge  makes  culture  possible.  Leisure, 
security,  and  culture  are  the  ideals  of  civilization.  But 
as  yet  these  blessings  are  very  imperfectly  possessed,  and 
very  inequally  distributed  so  far  as  possessed.  Leisure 
is  the  possession  only  of  the  idle  rich  and  the  idle  poor ; 
security  is  the  possession  of  any  only  in  a  relative  degree ; 
culture  is  possible  only  to  the  favored  few.  No  liberty 
is  worth  having  that  does  not  bestow  all  three  upon  all. 
Socialism  has  as  its  ideal,  in  a  word,  the  completion  of 
what  civilization  has  only  well  begun. 

The  present  great  obstacle  to  further  progress,  social- 
ists find  in  Capitahsm,  and  the  competitive  system  that 
Capitahsm  impHes  and  compels.  Society  has  been  strug- 
gling for  ages  towards  the  complete  ehmination  of  private 
war,  of  personal  strife  among  men,  and  the  attainment  of 
absolute  security  of  person  from  violence  and  property 
from  robbery.  The  age-long  struggle  is  not  yet  crowned 
with  entire  success,  but,  as  compared  with  the  state  of 
barbarism  from  which  mankind  has  risen,  the  end  has 
been  measurably  attained;  what  we  call  law  and  order 
has  taken  the  place  of  constant  strife  and  violence  and 
robbery.  But  society  has  permitted  strife  to  continue 
between  men  in  the  realm  of  industry,  and  has  even  en- 
couraged it.'  While  personal  violence  was  condemned 
from  prehistoric  times,  and  private  war  was  allowed  only 
during  the  prevalence  of  feudalism,  and  now  the  educated 
Christian  conscience  declares  that  even  international  war 
is  wrong,  industrial  war  is  declared  by  that  same  con- 
science to  be  not  only  right  but  necessary,  and  even  laud- 
able. The  majority  of  Christians  refuse  to  beheve  that 
any  better  system  is  possible. 

Society  exists  for  the  development  of  the  race  by 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCL\LISM 


273 


mutual  aid  and  cooperation.  Competition  is  therefore 
necessarily  antisocial.^  Society  strives  for  the  greatest 
good  of  all ;  competition  means  the  greatest  good  of  the 
smallest  number.  Competition  inevitably  makes  for 
the  things  that  disintegrate  society  and  hinder  the  up- 
ward march  of  humanity.  It  is  the  flat  denial  of  the 
Golden  Rule.  No  Christian  can  defend  competition 
without  intellectual  and  moral  hara-kiri.  And  the  anti- 
christian  and  antisocial  character  of  competition  is 
equalled  only  by  its  anti-economic  character.  The 
iniquity  of  Capitalism,  even  as  described  by  its  severest 
critics,  is  surpassed  by  its  stupidity.  For  the  competi- 
tive system  is  a  system  of  wanton  wastefulness.  The 
only  possible  way  b}^  which  a  community  can  learn  that 
it  does  not  need  more  of  a  certain  article  is  by  producing 
more  than  it  needs,  and  the  process  of  learning  drives 
employers  into  bankruptcy  and  employees  into  want. 
''Business"  is  nothing  more  than  a  gigantic  gamble. 

For  this  rule-of-thumb  method  SociaHsm  proposes  to 
substitute  scientific  methods :  the  definite  ascertainment 
of  the  needs  of  the  community,  and  the  adjustment  of 
production  to  need.  Over-production,  in  any  embarrass- 
ing sense,  would  be  impossible  under  SociaUsm ;  because, 
though  an  exact  adjustment  of  production  to  need  would 
not  be  possible,  any  surplus  of  production  in  any  single 
line  during  one  year  would  be  relatively  small,  and  could 
mean  only  so  much  accumulated  wealth  for  the  whole 
community,  and  therefore  so  much  less  labor  required 
in  that  line  for  the  coming  year.  The  waste  of  human 
energy  and  the  cost  of  human  agony  that  are  inseparable 

'  This  applies  to  all  forms  of  hostile  competition.  Emulative  com- 
petition is  wholesome  and  ethical,  and  society  should  encourage  it. 

T 


274  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

from  the  competitive  system  ought  to  be  a  sufficient  mo- 
tive to  induce  every  man  with  a  heart  in  his  bosom  to 
look  favorably  on  any  proposal  for  the  cooperative,  social 
production  and  distribution  of  wealth,  and  to  inquire 
carefully  into  its  merits.  Many  a  man  excuses  himself 
from  this  task  on  the  ground  that  the  present  system, 
with  its  admitted  evils,  has  also  its  good  points. 

For  one  thing,  as  the  business  man  often  complacently 
remarks,  the  competitive  system  "makes  character." 
Yes,  but  what  sort  of  character  ?  Can  a  really  admirable 
sort  of  character  be  produced  by  a  system  that  reduces  the 
worker  to  an  economic  condition  lower  than  prevailed  in 
slavery?  For  the  slave  had  one  great  advantage  over 
the  working-man :  he  was  never  unemployed,  and  never 
lacked  the  necessaries  of  life.  The  owner  was  compelled 
to  feed  his  slaves,  to  clothe  them,  to  provide  them  shelter, 
in  order  to  secure  their  economic  efficiency,  and  for  the 
same  reason  he  must  care  for  them  when  they  fell  ill. 
The  modern  factory-owner  is  hampered  by  no  such  ne- 
cessity of  being  humane  for  his  own  interest ;  when  slow 
starvation  or  illness  caused  by  insufficient  clothing  causes 
a  worker  to  drop  from  the  ranks,  three  others  stand  ready 
to  take  his  place.  If  the  slave-holder  failed  in  his  obliga- 
tions to  his  slaves,  their  labor  became  unprofitable;  by 
neglecting  his  moral  obligation  to  his  employees,  the  mod- 
ern factory-owner  makes  a  great  fortune.  In  many  im- 
portant respects,  the  prevailing  industrial  system  is  less 
humane  than  a  state  of  slavery.  Only  an  advanced 
civihzation,  that  boasts  of  liberty  for  all,  is  capable  of 
condemning  a  willing  worker  to  starve  and  shiver.  There 
is  plenty  of  work  to  be  done,  but  he  cannot  find  it ;  there 
is  plenty  of  food  to  be  eaten,  but  he  is  denied  it ;  the  shops 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCULISM  275 

and  warehouses  are  bursting  with  warm  clothing,  but  he 
and  his  wife  and  babes  can  have  none  of  it.  Is  it  not  a 
bitter  irony  to  call  such  a  state  of  things,  which  is  chronic 
among  us,  a  "social  system"  ? 

A  rate  of  wages  so  low  that  it  will  drive  men  into  crime 
and  women  into  prostitution  is  declared  by  manufac- 
turers and  storekeepers  to  be  absolutely  necessary  to 
the  continuance  of  their  business.  If  they  raised  wages, 
their  competitors  would  underbid  and  undersell  and 
eventually  ruin  them.  They  speak  the  truth  :  the  con- 
tinuance of  "business"  requires  this  awful  sacrifice  of 
human  bodies  and  souls.  As  Charles  Booth  says,  "Our 
modern  system  of  industry  will  not  work  without  some 
unemployed  margin,  some  reserve  of  labor."  Translated 
into  plain  words,  that  means :  to  keep  the  present  system 
in  working  order,  it  is  necessary  to  have  in  the  United 
States  about  two  milHon  workers  in  a  constant  state  of 
partial  starvation,  in  order  that  they  may  be  ready  to 
compete  with  those  employed  and  keep  wages  down  to  a 
standard  that  will  be  profitable  to  capital.  The  "scab" 
and  the  "open  shop"  are  a  necessity  of  "business."  The 
mere  statement  of  the  thing,  sociaHsts  believe,  should  be 
enough  to  convince  any  person  of  humane  instincts  that 
the  present  system  is  rotten  and  iniquitous  to  the  very 
bottom,  and  must  be  reconstructed. 

Thrift  is  no  remedy  for  such  social  evils.  Thrift  will 
elevate  a  few  individuals  above  the  mass,  but  if  it  were 
generally  practised  it  would  reduce  consumption  and 
cause  additional  misery.  We  need  a  remedy  that  will 
produce  more  consumption,  not  less,  by  making  it  pos- 
sible for  more  people  to  consume  an  amount  equal  to 
their  reasonable  wants.     And,  of  course,  we  need  a  remedy 


276  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

that  will  stimulate  production  to  the  point  of  satisfying 
all  reasonable  wants.  Competition  is  notoriously  in- 
capable of  doing  either ;  Socialism  professes  as  its  ideal 
the  doing  of  both,  and  asserts  its  abihty  to  accomplish 
both.  Are  not  such  claims  worthy  of  impartial  examina- 
tion, rather  than  scornful  rejection  without  inquiry  ? 

We  cannot  hope  for  any  essential  modification  of  the 
present  system  through  the  efforts  of  good  men.  Not 
all  capitalists  are  greedy  and  selfish ;  not  all  men  engaged 
in  competitive  business  are  careless  of  every  considera- 
tion save  the  making  of  the  largest  possible  profit.  Many 
men  under  the  present  system  are  actuated  by  lofty 
Christian  principles,  and  are  sincerely  anxious  for  the 
welfare  of  their  employees,  and  are  honestly  striving  to  do 
what  is  best  for  them,  as  well  as  best  for  themselves. 
But  such  men  will  necessarily  be  exceptions,  under  a 
system  that  is  founded  on  greed  and  encourages  every 
man  to  destroy  his  competitor.  The  heartiest  of  good- 
will can  do  no  more  than  palliate  some  of  the  worst  evils 
of  the  present  system.  "We  ought  never  to  trust  to  the 
justice  and  humanity  of  men  whose  interests  are  furthered 
by  injustice  and  cruelty.  The  slave-owner  in  America, 
the  manufacturer  in  England,  though  they  may  be  in- 
dividually good  men,  will,  nevertheless,  as  slave-owners 
and  masters,  be  guilty  of  atrocities  at  which  humanity 
shudders."  These  words  are  as  true  to-day  as  when 
they  were  spoken,  in  1869,  by  J.  A.  Roebuck,  the  English 
agitator  and  economist. 

Wealth,  in  the  last  analysis,  is  the  power  of  controlling 
the  services  of  others,  through  the  possession  of  things 
that  are  objects  of  desire  to  others.  Hence  the  accumu- 
lation of  wealth  in  private  hands  is  incompatible  with 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  277 

equal  libert}'  among  men  —  it  infallibly  leads  to  the  prac- 
tical enslavement  of  the  poor  b}^  the  rich.  The  produc- 
tion and  distribution  of  wealth  m.ust  be  controlled  by 
society,  or  liberty  is  possible  only  to  some,  not  to  all. 
Hence  the  essential  feature  of  all  sociaKstic  theories, 
however  much  they  differ  in  details,  is  a  system  of  coop- 
eration based  on  the  common  ownership  of  land  and 
capital.  Private  wealth  is  not  so  much  prohibited  as 
made  practically  impossible  at  the  same  time  that  the 
chief  motives  for  the  accumulation  of  private  wealth  are 
removed.  This  cooperative  production  and  distribution 
of  wealth  is  the  economic  goal  of  all  Socialism,  and  the 
particular  means  of  its  attainment,  by  state  action  or 
otherwise,  by  quick  revolution  or  slow  evolution,  are  mere 
questions  of  detail  not  involving  fundamental  principle, 
but  relating  mainly  to  views  of  expediency  or  practica- 
bility. 

Socialism  is  really  based  on  two  very  simple  principles  : 
First,  every  man  must  work.  In  an  ideal  state  of  society, 
there  can  be  no  idle  class.  Every  man  comes  into  the 
world  sentenced  to  hard  labor  for  life.  The  noble,  at 
one  end  of  the  social  scale,  and  the  tramp  at  the  other,  are 
equally  parasites,  consumers  who  do  not  produce,  and 
must  be  eliminated.  This  is  at  once  sensible  and  Chris- 
tian. Daily  bread  is  the  product  of  daily  labor ;  and 
only  he  can  honestly  offer  the  prayer,  "Give  us  this  day 
our  daily  bread,"  who  is  ready  to  do  the  work  needed 
for  its  production.  Paul  correctly  interprets  this  prayer 
when  he  says,  "If  a  man  will  not  work,  neither  shall  he 
eat."  Jesus  is  with  the  men  who  labor,  not  with  the 
idlers  who  live  on  the  labor  of  others.  We  need  to  learn 
that  hereditary  privileges  that  one  has  not  earned,  and  that 


278  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

exempt  him  from  the  common  lot,  are  not  honorable  but 
disgraceful ;  hereditary  wealth,  or  wealth  for  which  no 
adequate  service  has  been  rendered  to  society,  is  a  badge 
of  shame,  not  of  honor. 

The  second  principle  is,  that  every  man  should  enjoy 
the  fruits  of  his  labor,  subject  only  to  the  superior  rights 
of  the  whole  community.  What  a  man  produces  is  justly 
liable  to  taxation  for  the  general  good,  even  more  truly 
under  a  sociaHstic  system  than  under  the  present,  but 
it  should  not  be  wrested  from  him,  as  now,  by  those  who 
are  stronger  than  he.  In  other  words,  production,  which 
is  now  mainly  for  the  benefit  of  the  landlord  and  capitalist, 
should  be  for  the  benefit  of  the  producers,  that  is  to  say, 
of  the  entire  community.  Sociahsm  involves,  therefore, 
the  abohtion,  not  of  capital,  but  of  the  capitaHst.  It 
would  retain  capital,  but  make  it  more  effective  for  well- 
being  by  placing  it  under  social  control,  and  so  ''scatter 
plenty  o'er  a  smihng  land." 

This  great  economic  change,  while  it  is  justified  and 
urged  by  economic  considerations,  has  behind  it  ethical 
aims.  The  securing  of  plenty  is  only  incidental ;  the  ele- 
vation of  man  is  the  real  aim.  Wealth  is  only  human 
character  visuahzed.  "Every  atom  of  substance,"  says 
Ruskin,  "of  whatever  kind,  used  or  consumed,  is  so  much 
human  life  spent ;  which,  if  it  issue  in  the  saving  present 
life,  or  gaining  more,  is  well  spent,  but  if  not,  is  either  so 
much  Kfe  prevented  or  so  much  slain."  For  the  first  time 
in  the  history  of  man,  a  revolution  is  proposed  that  has  as 
its  end  not  the  substitution  of  one  ruHng  class  for  another, 
but  the  destruction  of  class  and  the  establishment  of  a 
universal  humanity.  It  is  often  said  of  Socialism  that  it 
is  the  enemy  of  civilization ;  it  claims  instead  to  be  the 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCL\LISM  279 

only  true  friend  of  civilization.  Instead  of  leaving  the 
benefits  of  human  progress  to  be  monopolized  and  en- 
joyed by  a  few,  it  proposes  to  extend  them  to  all.  Social- 
ism is  not  even  the  enemy  of  aristocracy ;  it  proposes  to 
make  it  possible  for  all  men  to  become  aristocrats.  A 
comfortable  Hving  will  not  make  a  gentleman,  but  you 
cannot  have  a  gentleman  without  three  generations  of 
those  who  have  lived  in  comfort.  SociaUsm  intends  to 
supply  the  material  basis  without  which  aristocrats  and 
gentlemen  cannot  be  made. 

Nietzsche  and  others  have  had  much  to  say  about  the 
Superman  whom  the  future  is  to  produce,  the  man  of 
to-day  raised  to  the  nth  power,  an  exalted  being  who  will 
express  the  capacity  of  the  race  for  development.  "A 
Superman,  if  you  will,"  says  Karl  Kautsky,  for  the  so- 
ciahsts,  "not  as  an  exception,  but  as  a  rule,  a  Superman 
as  compared  with  his  predecessors,  but  not  as  opposed  to 
his  comrades,  a  noble  man  who  seeks  his  satisfaction,  not 
by  being  great  among  crippled  dwarfs,  but  great  among 
the  great,  happy  among  the  happy  —  who  does  not  draw 
the  feeling  of  his  strength  from  the  fact  that  he  raises 
himself  upon  the  bodies  of  the  downtrodden,  but  be- 
cause a  union  with  his  fellows  gives  him  courage  to  dare 
the  attainment  of  the  highest  tasks."  Which  offers  the 
higher  ethical  ideal,  Nietzsche  or  Kautsky  ? 

11 

The  greater  part  of  the  critical  objections  made  to  the 
ideals  of  Socialism  reduce  themselves,  on  a  slight  examina- 
tion, to  variations  of  one  formula :  Socialism  is  merely 
a  resplendent  vision,  a  beautiful  mirage,  a  perfect  theory, 
but  quite  impossible  of  realization.     In  proof  of  the  im- 


28o  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

practicability  of  Socialism,  critics  appeal  to  the  irrecon- 
cilable differences  between  socialists ;  men  of  so  diverse 
aims  and  policies,  it  is  inferred,  could  never  agree  in  prac- 
tical action.  Of  course,  socialists  differ  widely  among 
themselves,  and  some  of  the  details  proposed  by  various 
groups  are  irreconcilable.  But  this  is  true  only  as  to 
subordinate  principles,  or  the  application  of  fundamental 
principles  to  details.  In  other  words,  the  things  in  de- 
bate are  expedients  merely.  Here  differences  of  opinion 
should  be  expected,  and,  it  may  be  fairly  presumed,  they 
will  prove  no  more  formidable  to  socialists  than  such 
differences  are  to  any  men  who  undertake  a  common 
cause.  Men  will  doubtless  be  no  more  unanimous  under 
a  socialistic  system  than  they  are  now ;  discussion  and 
experiment,  and  finally  the  will  of  the  majority,  will  then 
as  now  have  to  be  the  reliance  for  the  settlement  of  such 
differences.  Present  discussions  of  the  details  of  a  future 
socialistic  order  have  an  academic  interest  mainly,  yet 
they  are  not  entirely  without  value,  because  by  such 
discussion  an  approach  to  unanimity  may  be  secured  as 
social  evolution  progresses. 

M.  Yves  Guyot,  one  of  the  acutest  critics  of  Socialism, 
objects:  "No  socialist  has  succeeded  in  explaining  the 
conditions  for  the  production,  remuneration,  and  distri- 
bution of  capital  in  a  coUectivist  system."  On  the  con- 
trary, a  large  number  of  socialists  have  given  such  ex- 
planations, with  superfluous  and  meticulous  detail.  Mr. 
Bellamy's  romance,  "Looking  Backward,"  is  an  example. 
The  defect  of  such  explanations  is  that  they  have  not  been 
convincing,  which  is  probably  what  M.  Guyot  means. 
But  why  should  they  convince?  Economics  does  not 
profess  to  be  an  exact  science,  with  power  of  accurate  pre- 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  281 

vision,  and  why  should  Socialism,  more  than  any  other 
economic  theory,  be  required  to  predict  the  future? 
Such  explanations,  or  predictions,  as  M.  Gu3'ot  challenges 
sociaHsts  to  make  are  necessarily  worthless,  except  in  so 
far  as  they  are  understood  to  be  a  work  of  the  imagina- 
tion. To  set  forth,  as  Mr.  Bellamy  did,  a  picture  of  how 
Socialism  might  be  supposed  to  work,  is  a  valid  reply  to 
the  assertion  that  Socialism  is  impossible.  The  illus- 
tration of  possibility  successfully  controverts  dogmatic 
denial  of  possibiHty,  but  it  does  nothing  more.  Can  M. 
Guyot,  or  any  other  defender  of  Capitalism,  predict  what 
^all  be  the  organization  of  American  society  a  century 
hence?  Of  course  he  can,  anybody  can,  but  with  no 
authority  superior  to  Mr.  Bellamy's  —  that  is  to  say, 
with  none  at  all. 

These  objections  to  Socialism  are  ceasing  to  be  heard 
in  serious  Kterature.  They  are  entirely  out  of  date, 
because  they  apply  only  to  the  Utopian  schemes  of  the 
past.  The  objection  of  impracticability  may  be  conclu- 
sive in  the  case  of  a  Utopia ;  against  an  imaginary  social 
order  it  is  perfectly  vaHd  to  set  imaginary  objections. 
But  impracticability  is  not  a  valid  objection  to  a  Social- 
ism that  expects  to  be  realized  through  a  social  evolu- 
tion. The  difference  between  a  Utopia  and  an  evolution 
is,  that  one  is  thought  out  and  the  other  is  lived  out. 
Practicability  is  of  the  essence  of  evolution ;  every  step 
taken  must  work  or  be  abandoned.  As  Karl  Marx  puts 
it,  the  socialist  is  merely  a  sort  of  midwife,  helping  the 
old  order  give  birth  to  the  new  with  as  little  pain  as  pos- 
sible. When  a  writer  like  Mr.  Mallock,  therefore,  says 
of  Socialism  that  it  is  impregnable  as  a  theory,  the  only 
trouble  being  that  it  will  not  work,  he  is  simply  writing 


282  SOCIALISM  AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

nonsense.     It  will  work ;   it  must  work ;   whatever  does 
not  work  cannot  be  evolutionary  Socialism. 

Ill 

When  we  take  up  the  details  of  Sociahsm,  we  quickly 
meet  a  serious  and  perplexing  question ;  namely,  the  prin- 
ciple on  which  the  wealth  produced  by  a  cooperative 
society  is  to  be  distributed.  All  sociahsts  are  agreed 
that  the  distribution  must  be  equitable ;  they  are  about 
equally  divided  in  opinion,  as  to  groups,  though  perhaps 
not  as  to  numbers,  whether  "equitable"  and  ''equal" 
are  synonymous.  Will  equal  distribution  satisfy  the 
average  ethical  sense  of  the  future  sociaHst  community, 
or  will  there  be  recognition  of  unequal  service  and  there- 
fore unequal  reward  ? 

There  is  much  to  be  said,  abstractly,  for  either  principle. 
It  may  be  plausibly  argued  that,  as  men's  services  vary 
greatly  in  value,  they  should  be  unequally  compensated, 
each  receiving  the  real  value  of  his  service.  There  is 
no  such  thing  as  equality  in  this  world,  and  no  possibility 
of  equahty.  Any  attempt  of  Socialism  to  accomphsh 
human  equahty  must  be  classed  with  Jack  Cade's 
promise  that  seven  halfpenny  loaves  should  be  sold  for 
a  penny,  and  the  three-hooped  pot  should  have  ten  hoops. 
The  modern  socialist  recognizes  this  necessary  hmitation, 
and  hastens  to  profess  that  the  equahty  dem.anded  by 
him  is  equahty  of  opportunity,  equality  of  privilege. 
But  given  equality  of  opportunity  and  in  equahty  of 
abihty,  and  by  inexorable  logic  and  fact  as  inexorable, 
there  will  result  unequal  achievement.  Will  Socialism 
recognize  such  inequality  and  provide  proportioned 
(that  is,  unequal)  rewards  ?     If  not,  is  Sociahsm  anything 


THE   IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISil  283 

but  the  attempt  of  the  lame  and  the  lazy  and  the  ineflfi- 
cient  to  pull  all  men  down  to  their  level  ?  Can  a  social 
order  be  founded  on  such  a  basis?  Will  the  men  of 
brains  and  energy  ever  submit  to  be  robbed  of  the  fruits 
of  their  labor,  that  these  fruits  may  be  enjoyed  by  those 
who  have  not  produced  them  ?  So  long  as  the  world 
stands,  is  it  not  likely  that  the  man  who  can  do  things, 
and  does  them,  will  be  on  a  higher  level  than  the  man 
who  cannot  do  things,  or  is  too  indolent  to  try  ?  Making 
water  run  uphill  would  seem  to  be  as  easy  a  task  as  to 
reverse  this  inevitable  current  of  human  affairs. 

Moreover,  as  another  practical  difficulty,  this  should 
be  considered :  in  the  case  of  purely  intellectual  services 
there  would  be  no  Httle  embarrassment  in  estimating 
their  value.  Competition  now  fixes  a  market  value,  even 
for  intellectual  services ;  but  when  there  is  no  competi- 
tion, how  shall  an  immaterial  service  be  equated  with  a 
material  reward  ?  Some  of  the  Marxians,  if  not  Marx 
himself,  would  cut  this  knot,  not  untie  it,  by  denying 
that  any  sort  of  labor  is  worthy  of  compensation  but 
manual  labor.  But  we  may  be  sure  that  this  will  not 
be  the  solution  of  the  future.  Brains,  not  brawn,  will 
continue  to  rule  the  world,  and,  if  they  are  not  paid,  they 
will  take  their  pay. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  the  problem  be  approached  from 
the  side  of  human  brotherhood,  the  decision  will  be  differ- 
ent. A  father  who  loves  his  children  equally  divides  his 
property  equally  among  them.  Is  not  brotherhood  a 
better  title  to  a  share  in  the  common  product  than  serv- 
ice ?  We  see  that  selfishness,  pleading  justice  and  amount 
of  service,  will  claim  unequal  division;  love,  recogniz- 
ing common  brotherhood,  will  concede  equal   division. 


284  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

Which  will  conquer  ?  Nobody  can  at  present  say ;  but 
whichever  way  the  final  decision  incHnes,  there  can  at  any 
rate  be  no  question  which  most  accords  with  the  funda- 
mental ideas  of  Socialism,  as  well  as  with  the  ethics  of 
Jesus.    All  men  may  not  be  equal,  but  all  are  equally  men. 

That  equal  division  is  in  accord  with  the  highest  ethics, 
is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  men  always  resort  to  this 
principle  in  extremes.  After  the  San  Francisco  earth- 
quake, food  and  stores  were  seized  by  the  public  author- 
ities and  distributed  to  the  people  according  to  their  need. 
Rich  and  poor  stood  in  line  and  received  their  share  in 
turn.  Shipwrecked  men,  compelled  to  take  to  the  boats, 
divide  food  and  water  equally,  and  it  is  the  unwritten  law 
of  the  sea  that  he  who  steals  from  the  common  store  for- 
feits his  right  to  live.  Under  great  stress,  the  primal  eth- 
ical instincts  of  the  race,  as  well  as  the  brute  in  man,  assert 
themselves  with  unmistakable  emphasis.  And  such  con- 
siderations as  these  lend  great  force  to  the  reasoning  of 
Enrico  Ferri,  one  of  the  leading  socialists  of  Italy,  when 
he  says,  "When  all  men  have  given  their  best  labor  to 
society,  each  is  entitled  to  an  equal  share  of  the  product, 
since  each  has  contributed  equally  to  that  solidarity  of 
labor  which  sustains  the  life  of  the  social  aggregate." 
Unequal  distribution  may  be  a  relic  of  individualism, 
which,  though  it  now  appeals  strongly  to  many  as  just, 
will  become  less  and  less  ethically  convincing  as  we  ad- 
vance toward  the  new  social  order. 

Closely  akin  to  the  question  of  distribution  is  the  ques- 
tion of  compensation.  Sociahsm  cannot  realize  its  ideal, 
or  even  approximate  it,  except  by  expropriation  of  land 
and  machinery.  Expropriation  of  land  is  already  legal 
and  common,  under  the  so-called  right  of  eminent  do- 


THE  IDEALS   OF  SOCIALISM  285 

main  —  the  theory  that  the  rights  and  interests  of  the 
whole  people  take  precedence  of  the  ordinary  rights  of 
property.  SociaHsm  is  merely  demanding  a  wider  appli- 
cation of  this  principle  than  has  been  usual,  but  proposes 
no  new  principle.  But  such  expropriation  has  thus  far 
imphed  compensation :  the  right  of  the  people  to  resume 
ownership  of  land,  if  needed  for  public  purposes,  has  not 
been  pressed  to  denial  of  the  right  of  the  private  owner 
to  receive  a  fair  equivalent  for  that  of  which  he  is  deprived. 
Will  Sociahsm  enforce  expropriation  without  compensa- 
tion ?     Does  SociaHsm  imply  confiscation  ? 

Different  answers  are  given  by  sociaHstic  writers  as  to 
what  ought  to  be  the  socialistic  policy  in  this  respect.  It 
is  at  bottom  an  ethical  question,  but  many  socialists  pre- 
fer to  discuss  it  as  a  question  of  expediency.  Mr.  Spargo 
shows  that  compensation  is  entirely  consistent  with 
socialistic  principles,  and  that  many  socialists  of  authority 
have  actually  favored  it.^  On  the  other  hand,  it  would 
be  easy  to  cite  many  socialists  of  perhaps  equal  authority, 
who  have  scouted  all  idea  of  compensation.  Karl  Marx, 
who  is  to-day  the  most  widely  accepted  authority  among 
socialists,  does  not  apparently  feel  very  strongly  the 
ethical  obligation  of  compensation,  but  distinctly  favors 
it  as  most  expedient :  "It  will  still  be,  if  we  can  proceed 
by  compensation,  the  cheapest  way  to  achieve  the  revolu- 
tion." That  is,  he  believes  that  compensation  will  not 
only  involve  less  danger  of  bloodshed  and  suffering,  but 
would  be  economically  preferable,  because  a  peaceful 
revolution  does  not  suspend  the  wheels  of  industry  a 
single  day,  while  a  revolution  by  violence  inevitably  sus- 
pends the  productive  processes  and  makes  a  people  just 

1  "Socialism,"  pp.  333-337- 


286  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

that  much  poorer.  Expropriation  and  spoliation  are  not, 
therefore,  identical  terms.  It  should  seem  that  socialists 
will  do  well  not  to  permit  them  to  become  synonymous. 
Nothing  would  do  more  to  retard  the  progress  of  Social- 
ism, if  not  to  make  its  victory  impossible,  than  to  let  it 
be  understood  that  everybody  who  has  anything  to  lose 
must  lose  it,  in  order  that  those  who  have  nothing  to  lose 
may  gain  all.  Considered  simply  as  a  matter  of  tactics, 
which  is  the  way  that  Marx  chooses  to  consider  the  ques- 
tion, socialists  would  be  mad  to  suppose  that  they  can 
ever  persuade  the  Haves  to  give  all  to  the  Have-nots. 
Or  that,  faihng  to  persuade,  they  can  compel. 

But  it  should  also  be  understood  that,  in  demanding 
expropriation  without  compensation,  socialistic  writers 
are  not  reckless  of  ethical  principles.  We  shall  not  get 
their  point  of  view  unless  we  comprehend  that  they  urge 
this  as  the  only  ethical  course.  What  the  capitalist  calls 
confiscation,  they  call  restitution.  They  hold  that  the 
capitalist  is  a  robber;  that  his  wealth  has  been  stolen 
from  the  producers.  They  deny  the  right  of  the  capitaKst 
to  demand  compensation  for  his  past  robbery  and  his 
loss  of  the  privilege  to  rob  for  the  future.  To  those  bred 
in  the  ethics  of  Capitahsm,  these  ethics  seem  monstrous, 
a  mere  specious  apology  for  wholesale  rapine  and  plunder ; 
but  the  world  is  beginning  to  question  whether  the  ethics 
of  Capitalism  are  true  ethics.  Some  think  that  the  cap- 
italist has  set  the  worker  a  shining  example  of  rapacity 
without  conscience  and  of  profligacy  without  shame ;  and 
that  the  capitaHst  should  not  wonder  if  the  worker  now 
says  with  Shylock,  "The  villainy  you  teach  me  I  will  exe- 
cute, and  it  shall  go  hard,  but  I  will  better  the  instruc- 
tion,"    For  generations,  says  the  sociaHst,  the  capitalist 


THE  roEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  287 

has  taken,  by  force  and  fraud,  the  hon's  share  of  the 
product  of  labor,  and  has  added  insult  to  injury  by  main- 
taining that  it  was  justly  his.  He  has  procured  the  enact- 
ment and  enforcement  of  stringent  laws  to  protect  him 
in  the  enjoyment  of  wealth  so  ill  gotten.  Is  it  any  won- 
der that  the  man  whose  labor  is  the  source  of  all  this 
wealth  now  hopes  for  the  day  when  this  spoil  shall  be 
snatched  from  the  robber  and  restitution  made  to  the 
wronged;  or  that  he  laughs  at  compensation,  as  one 
would  laugh  at  the  proposal  to  compensate  a  highway 
robber  from  whom  a  stolen  purse  had  been  wrested  ?  We 
may  not  accept  that  point  of  view ;  we  may  find  some 
defect  in  such  ethics ;  let  us  at  least  make  the  effort  to 
comprehend  both,  and  then  ask  if  there  be  no  truth  in 
either. 

IV 

It  is  objected  that  Socialism  is  economically  infeas- 
ible,  that  the  only  result  to  be  fairly  anticipated  from 
socialized  production  and  equal  distribution  would  be 
such  a  reduction  of  per  capita  wealth  as  would  mean 
universal  poverty,  the  total  destruction  of  all  that  we 
mean  by  civilization.  Huxley  has  put  this  objection 
with  peculiar  emphasis  and  point :  "So  long  as  unlimited 
multiplication  goes  on,  no  social  organization  which  has 
ever  been  devised,  or  is  likely  to  be  devised,  no  fiddle- 
faddling  with  the  distribution  of  wealth,  will  deliver  so- 
ciety from  the  tendency  to  be  destroyed  by  the  reproduc- 
tion within  itself,  in  its  intensest  form,  of  that  struggle 
for  existence  the  limitation  of  which  is  the  object  of  so- 
ciety." ^     This  is  our  old  friend  Malthusianism  with  a 

*  "Evolution  and  Ethics,"  p.  212. 


288  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

new  face.  Enough  has  perhaps  been  already  said  about 
the  defects  of  this  theory,  yet  it  may  be  well  to  direct 
attention  anew  to  its  weakest  point:  reproduction,  as 
matter  of  fact,  is  far  from  unlimited ;  it  has  many  effec- 
tive limitations.  According  to  universal  present  ex- 
perience, in  every  civilized  country,  the  birth-rate  in- 
creases as  we  go  down  the  economic  scale,  and  decreases 
as  we  go  up.  The  more  any  class  advances  in  comfort, 
the  less  becomes  its  fecundity.  Why,  then,  if  the  whole 
of  society  should  become  comfortable,  should  we  not  ex- 
pect from  our  present  experience  that  its  fecundity  would 
rather  diminish  than  increase  ? 

If  it  be  replied  that  Socialism  proposes  to  remove  all  the 
restraints  of  prudence  that  now  lead  the  well-to-do  classes 
to  decline  to  bring  into  the  world  more  children  than  they 
can  properly  rear  and  educate,  it  may  be  rejoined  that 
prudence  cannot  be  the  real  cause  of  the  decrease  of  fe- 
cundity in  the  higher  classes.  For  the  rich  are  restrained 
by  no  such  considerations  of  prudence;  they  have  the 
means  to  rear  and  educate  large  families,  but  it  is  among 
those  who  have  the  largest  means  that  the  birth-rate  is 
smallest.  The  very  rich  have  smaller  famihes  than  the 
moderately  rich.  Is  not  the  real  danger  of  society,  as  it 
advances  in  economic  comfort,  that  which  President  Roose- 
velt pointed  out  under  the  term  "race  suicide  "  ?  May  we 
not  rationally  anticipate  that  the  effect  of  Sociahsm  would 
be  rather  under-population  than  over-population  ? 

Assuming  this  to  be  no  serious  difficulty,  it  may  be 
arithmetically  proved  that  Socialism  is  economically  pos- 
sible. The  official  statistics  of  the  present  production  of 
wealth  in  the  United  States  show  that  if  the  product  were 
equally  divided,  every  individual  would  have  something 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCL\LISM  289 

over  $300  a  year,  or  $1500  for  each  family  of  five.^  This 
would  insure  a  fair  average  of  comfort.  But  with  every 
able-bodied  person  a  producer,  which  is  the  theory  of 
Socialism,  the  amount  of  annual  wealth  would  be  incal- 
culably increased.  Far  less  than  half  of  the  able-bodied 
population  are  now  engaged  in  production,  and  the  doub- 
ling or  tripling  of  labor  would  produce  astonishing  results. 
Better  organization  and  direction  of  labor  would  enhance 
the  result.  There  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt  that  from 
four  to  six  hours'  work  a  day  —  inteUigent  and  hearty 
labor  —  would  suffice  for  the  support  of  a  people  in  ample 
comfort,  and  even  insure  as  much  luxury  as  is  compatible 
with  the  maintenance  of  good  physical  and  moral  con- 
ditions. 

There  is  practically  no  limit  to  the  productiveness  of 
the  soil  under  intensive  cultivation,  and  the  food  supply 
can  always  be  made  to  exceed  the  need  of  population.- 
There  need  be  no  fear  of  starvation  under  a  socialistic 
regime,  and  there  is  plenty  of  starvation  now.  There  is  a 
similar  possibility  of  indefinite  productiveness  of  manu- 

'  The  figures  are  as  follows :  value  of  farm  products,  $7,848,000,000 
(I  give  only  round  numbers) ;  manufacturing  products,  $14,802,000,000 ; 
value  of  gold  mined,  $96,000,000;  of  silver,  $27,000,000;  of  other  min- 
erals, $1,506,000,000;  making  a  total  of  $24,279,000,000.  As  some  of 
these  figures  are  from  later  statistics  than  1900,  the  population  may  be 
estimated  at  80,000,000  (for  the  United  States  proper,  to  which  the  above 
figures  apply),  and  the  result  is  $303  per  capita,  or  $1515  for  each  family 
of  five. 

*  "  A  trustworthy  estimate  of  the  relative  efficiency  of  agriculture  as  at 
present  pursued  —  trustworthy,  because  based,  not  on  guesses,  but  on 
careful  scientific  tests  —  is  that  in  the  culture  of  potatoes  the  average 
efficiency  of  the  United  States  is  19  per  cent;  in  wheat  culture  the  aver- 
age is  only  28  per  cent ;  in  cotton  culture  average  efficiency  is  even  less, 
but  17.5  per  cent."  —  Harrington  Emerson,  "Efficiency  as  a  Basis  for 
Operation  and  Wages,"  pp.  76-79. 
u 


290  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

facturing  labor.  Mr.  Edison  is  not  a  socialist,  and  he  will 
probably  be  accepted  as  having  a  right  to  predict  the  in- 
dustrial future,  if  any  man  has  such  a  right.  "There  will 
be  no  poverty  in  the  world  a  hundred  years  from  now," 
says  Mr.  Edison.  "There  is  no  limit  to  the  cheapness 
with  which  things  can  be  made.  The  world  will  soon  be 
flooded  with  the  cheap  products  of  machinery  —  not  the 
poor  products,  the  cheap  products.  .  .  .  Poverty  was 
for  a  world  that  only  used  its  hands.  Now  that  men  have 
begun  to  use  their  brains,  poverty  is  decreasing.  Think 
how  long  the  world  has  stood,  and  then  recall  that  practi- 
cally everything  we  know  to-day  that  is  worth  while  we 
have  learned  within  a  hundred  years.  .  .  .  We  are  learn- 
ing how  to  control  the  forces  of  nature.  As  we  learn,  we 
shall  transform  the  world."  ^ 

Capitalists  are  beginning  to  recognize  that  their  plants 
do  not  produce  nearly  to  the  limit  of  capacity.  The  re- 
sult of  the  treatment  of  laborers  as  beasts  of  burden  or  as 
machines  has  been  a  disastrous  limitation  of  production.^ 
Every  resource  has  been  exhausted  to  increase  the  efficiency 
of  machinery,  but  the  efficiency  of  men  has  been  neglected, 
and  the  principles  of  "business"  have  discouraged  effi- 
ciency in  the  laborer.  The  unions  are  sometimes  charged 
with  a  responsibility  that  belongs  elsewhere ;  it  is  asserted 
that  the  tendency  of  these  organizations  is  to  reduce  all 

1  "The  Wonderful  New  World  Ahead  of  Us,"  in  the  Cosmopolitan  for 
February,  191 1,  p.  306. ' 

2  English  workmen  have  made  the  capital  mistake,  from  the  econo- 
mist's point  of  view,  of  deliberately  limiting  production.  Their  unions 
establish  not  only  a  minimum  wage,  but  a  maximum  day's  work,  and  no 
member  of  a  union  can  be  induced  to  do  more.  The  result  is  that  the 
English  worker's  efficiency  is  as  i  to  2j  of  the  American's.  But  he  has 
something  to  say  for  himself  in  justification  of  his  policy  that  we  need 
not  pause  to  examine. 


THE   IDEALS   OF  SOCIALISM  291 

wages  to  the  capacity  of  the  least  efficient,  so  that  all 
motive  to  excel  is  destroyed.  The  unions  concede  the 
fact,  but  deny  the  inference :  the  fault  is  not  theirs,  but 
the  employer's.  The  union  merely  demands  that  men 
shall  be  paid  a  minimum  wage ;  it  has  no  objection  to 
the  paying  of  higher  wages  to  the  better  workmen ;  but 
the  employer  has  deliberately  made  the  minimum  wage 
the  maximum.  Moreover,  if  in  any  factory  or  shop,  some 
men  do  much  more  work  than  the  average,  either  this  is  at 
once  exacted  by  the  employer  as  the  standard  for  all,  or 
else  wages  are  cut.  When  "piece-work"  is  the  rule,  the 
result  is  similar :  if  some  workers  earn  much  more  than 
the  average  wage,  the  price  is  cut  for  all.  The  employer 
has,  by  this  policy,  ingeniously  destroyed  every  motive 
for  efficiency  in  his  best  workmen.  A  good  man  knows 
that  if  he  really  exerts  himself,  he  hurts  all  his  fellows 
without  benefiting  himself. 

Capitalists  are  now  beginning  to  realize  the  results  of 
this  policy,  and  careful  experiments  are  making  in  scien- 
tific efficiency,  with  the  end  not  only  of  determining  what 
is  a  precise  standard  of  a  day's  work,  but  of  giving  the 
worker  the  benefit  of  his  increased  efficiency  in  increased 
wages.  Workers  must  be  treated  as  individuals,  and  with 
some  rudiments  of  justice,  if  capitalists  would  increase 
their  output ;  by  their  short-sighted  rule  of  fining  effi- 
ciency, instead  of  rewarding  it,  they  have  doubly  punished 
themselves.  Men  who  have  made  a  study  of  scientific 
efficiency  have  concluded  that  few  manufacturing  plants 
suffer  a  loss  of  less  than  30  per  cent  of  possible  efficiency, 
as  a  result  of  the  ignorance  and  unwillingness  of  workers. 
One  of  the  chief  authorities  on  this  subject  has  recently 
declared  :  "The  actual  and  potential  wastes  in  each  year 


292  SOCIALISM  AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

amount  to  as  much  as  the  total  accumulation  of  wealth, 
and  if  all  the  possessors  of  accumulations  were  left  in  un- 
disturbed possession,  and  the  wastes  of  current  produc- 
tion and  use  eliminated  and  the  gain  equitably  appor- 
tioned according  to  meed  and  deed,  no  woman  or  child 
would  need  to  do  mill  or  factory,  store  or  office,  work,  no 
superannuated  man  or  woman  need  toil,  no  young  man 
need  delay  marriage,  nor  any  head  of  a  family  be  torn 
by  anxiety  as  to  the  feeding,  the  clothing,  or  the  housing 
of  his  dependents."  ^ 

There  is  no  disposition  on  the  part  of  socialists  to  mini- 
mize the  importance  of  this  matter ;  practically  every 
socialist  writer  of  note  agrees  with  Kirkup,  when  he 
says :  "The  claims  of  Socialism  must  rest  on  its  superior 
efficiency,  from  an  economic,  political,  and  moral  point  of 
view."  Great  losses  that  are  to-day  inseparable  from  the 
clumsy  action  of  the  "law"  of  supply  and  demand  might 
be  prevented  by  the  greater  fluidity  of  a  system  that 
would  insure  a  better  adjustment  between  need  and  pro- 
duction. The  Trust  has  shown  what  economies  of  pro- 
duction are  possible,  even  under  our  present  system,  by 
such  adjustment.  The  Sugar  Trust  closed  three-fourths 
of  its  factories,  and  fully  maintained  its  volume  of  pro- 
duction, with  an  immense  saving  of  cost,  and,  of  course, 
corresponding  profit.  The  Whiskey  Trust  acquired  eighty 
plants  at  its  organization  or  soon  after,  closed  all  but 
twelve,  and  produced  more  whiskey  than  ever ;  greatly 
to  the  scath  of  the  people,  but  as  greatly  to  the  profit  of 
the  Trust. 

Some  of  the  elements  of  cost  under  the  present  system 
that  would  be  ehminated  under  Socialism  are :  insurance ; 

^  Emerson,  "Efficiency,"  p.  16. 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  293 

all  losses  of  the  community,  by  fire  or  death,  would  still 
fall  on  the  community,  in  some  form,  but  only  the  actual 
loss  would  be  borne,  not,  as  now,  a  tax  enormously'greater. 
The  middleman  and  the  broker  would  disappear,  and, 
becoming  producers,  would  add  to  wealth  instead  of  being 
a  heavy  tax  on  production.  All  advertising,  and  the 
other  costs  of  selling  goods,  which  now  fully  double 
their  cost  to  the  consumer,  would  be  saved.  The  great 
evil  of  adulteration  would  vanish  with  competition, 
which  alone  supplies  the  irresistible  motive.  No  laws 
against  adulteration  can  be  more  than  palliative,  while 
this  powerful  motive  remains  in  full  force. 


Another  much  urged  objection  to  Socialism :  Ex- 
perience thus  far  shows  that  private  enterprises  are  con- 
ducted with  greater  energy  and  economy  than  public. 
But  is  that  true  ?  Would  it  not  be  more  accurate  to  say 
that  some  private  enterprises  are  conducted  with  more 
efficiency  and  at  less  cost  than  some  public  enterprises, 
and  vice  versa?  Was  the  digging  of  the  Panama  Canal 
conducted  with  more  efficiency  under  the  corporation 
organized  by  de  Lesseps  than  now  under  the  United  States 
government?  It  is  notorious  that  enterprises  managed 
by  the  engineering  corps  of  the  United  States  Army  are 
conducted  more  efficiently  —  as  measured  by  quality  of 
work,  time  consumed,  and  cost  —  than  any  other  engi- 
neering work  in  our  country.  How  about  the  Post  Office 
—  is  its  service  exceeded  in  accuracy,  promptness,  and 
cheapness  by  the  express  and  telephone  services  conducted 
by  private  corporations  ?  Could  the  average  citizen  be 
convinced  that  the  postal  service  would  be  better  done 


294  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

by  a  private  corporation?  Let  anybody  try  it  who 
thinks  he  could.  Where  there  seems  lack  of  economy, 
in  public  as  compared  with  private  service,  the  reason 
generally  is  that  there  has  been  a  desire  to  administer, 
not  for  the  lowest  cost  of  service,  but  to  give  the  greatest 
amount  of  service  regardless  of  cost. 

Since  this  is  above  all  a  practical  question,  let  us  take 
a  severely  practical  case.  Up  to  1892  the  city  of  Nash- 
ville was  lighted  by  a  private  company,  with  382  arc  lights 
and  437  gas  lamps,  at  an  annual  cost  of  $65,000,  The 
city  then  acquired  the  plant  and  did  its  own  lighting.  In 
1896,  with  the  same  plant,  the  cost  of  operation,  includ- 
ing interest  on  the  value  of  the  plant,  was  $53,698,  or 
$11,301  less  than  was  paid  under  contract  to  the  private 
company.  Moreover,  the  city  had  maintained  during 
that  year  848  arc  lights,  and  652  gas  lamps,  making  its 
actual  saving  for  the  year  $48,982.  No  doubt  cases  are 
producible  in  which  municipal  lighting  has  resulted  in 
loss,  rather  than  in  so  large  a  gain.  But  a  single  instance 
like  that  of  Nashville  is  enough  to  dispose  of  the  a  priori 
objection  that  private  enterprise  is  less  costly  than  pub- 
He.  Public  enterprises  may  be  conducted  in  so  dis- 
honest and  inefficient  a  manner  as  to  become  a  tax  on 
the  community;  if  so,  it  is  evidently  the  community's 
own  fault,  and  the  remedy  is  in  its  own  hands.  But  how 
can  a  community  protect  itself  from  a  rapacious  corpora- 
tion that  charges  an  extortionate  price  for  its  services, 
and  is  protected  in  so  doing  by  the  possession  of  a  virtual 
or  actual  monopoly?  This  is  the  problem  that  many 
municipahties  are  facing  just  now,  and  the  only  effectual 
answer  appears  to  be,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  municipal 
ownership.     And  if,  in  such  case,  a  municipality  should 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  295 

fail  to  secure  the  expected  economies,  it  will  at  least 
have  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  it  is  no  longer 
plundered  and  oppressed  for  the  profit  of  others,  but  is 
getting  something  hke  a  dollar's  worth  for  a  dollar's 
expenditure. 

A  certain  practical  difficulty  will  emerge  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  SociaUsm,  and  on  its  solution  will  largely  depend 
this  question  of  efficiency :  How  can  the  men  best  fitted 
for  direction  be  secured  under  a  sociaHst  system  ?  The 
necessity  of  such  directing  does  not  need  arguing,  and 
ver}'  ominous  is  the  disaster  of  so  many  attempts  at  co- 
operation, because  of  the  lack  of  proper  direction,  the 
failure  of  the  enterprise  to  evolve  men  of  the  intelhgence 
to  perceive  how  labor  could  be  profitably  expended,  where 
a  market  for  the  product  could  be  found,  how  the  process 
of  making  could  be  conducted  with  least  waste,  by  what 
inventions  it  might  be  facihtated,  and  how  several  hun- 
dred workmen  could  be  so  organized  and  supervised  as  to 
produce  the  best  results. 

The  sociaHst  is  not  obliged  by  his  theory  to  find  an- 
swers for  all  such  practical  problems,  and  probably  the 
best  answer  to  this  one  is.  We  do  not  know.  If,  three 
hundred  years  ago,  the  wisest  man  had  been  asked  what 
sort  of  a  system  could  be  worked  out  for  the  most  efifec- 
tive  use  in  production  of  a  host  of  labor-saving  inventions, 
he  could  not  have  predicted  the  modern  Trust.  We  have 
come  to  that  result  by  a  process  of  social  evolution,  every 
step  of  which  is  plain  enough  now  that  we  look  back  on 
it,  no  step  of  which  could  have  been  anticipated  genera- 
tions ago.  As  society  continues  its  evolution  towards 
the  socialistic  organization,  assuming  that  to  be  its  goal, 
other  methods  will  be  evolved  as  needed.     The  mere 


296  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

fact  that  men  cannot  now  predict  what  the  methods  will 
be  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  they  are  possible. 

But  the  socialist  can  suggest  certain  rational  lines  along 
which  the  course  of  future  evolution  may  conceivably 
progress.  The  national  postal  system  points  out  a  way 
by  which  the  best  men  could  be  found  in  every  depart- 
ment of  industry,  namely,  by  promotion  from  the  ranks 
up  to  the  highest  positions  of  those  who  proved  themselves 
worthy  of  advancement  by  their  capacity  and  service. 
A  way  of  securing  the  best  men  for  direction  might  thus 
be  devised  that  would  be  impartial  and  almost  automatic 
•in  its  action.  And,  as  in  the  post-ofhce  now,  so  then  in 
all  forms  of  industry,  the  main  question  would  not  need 
to  be.  Will  this  pay  ?  but,  Is  this  best  ?  What  private 
corporation  would  ever  introduce  free  rural  delivery? 
The  unprofitable  enterprises  would  be  maintained  by  the 
profitable,  as  is  the  case  now  to  some  extent.  For  ex- 
ample, when  one  pays  two  cents  postage  on  a  letter,  he 
pays  about  half  a  cent  for  the  actual  cost  of  delivering 
that  letter,  and  a  cent  and  a  half  tax  to  make  up  in  part 
the  deficit  caused  by  doing  other  post-office  business  at 
a  loss.  The  post-office  in  many  ways  illustrates  how  all 
business  would  be  done  under  a  socialistic  regime :  for 
the  common  good,  at  common  cost  or  profit,  as  the  case 
might  be. 

VI 

It  is  further  objected  to  a  socialistic  system  that  it 
would  take  away  what  has  hitherto  been  the  greatest 
motive  to  human  exertion,  the  possibility  of  acquiring 
wealth,  and  would  put  no  adequate  motive  in  its  place. 
This  is  Mallock's  heaviest  indictment  of  Socialism.     But 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  297 

how  great  is  its  weight?  What  does  "the  possibihty  of 
acquiring  wealth"  mean?  What  has  it  meant?  It 
means  and  has  meant  the  possibihty  that  a  few  men,  by 
superior  shrewdness  and  good  fortune,  might  obtain  a 
vastly  disproportionate  share  of  the  wealth  produced. 
That  such  a  possibility  may  exist,  it  is  necessary  that  the 
great  majority  shall  get  a  very  small  share  of  the  product. 
Can  society  progress  only  by  allowing  the  strong  to  ex- 
ploit the  weak  ?  Is  Kf e  worth  living  only  on  the  condi- 
tion that  most  men  must  lose  in  order  that  a  few  may 
gain  ?  Is  it  not  just  possible  that  a  higher  economic  effi- 
ciency in  society  would  result  if  every  man  had  the  cer- 
tainty that  his  material  reward  would  be  commensurate 
with  his  effort  ? 

The  answer  to  these  questions  cannot  be  a  simple  Yes 
or  No,  for  the  problem  is  greatly  complicated,  not  simple. 
It  is  historically  true,  perhaps,  that  the  spur  of  want  on 
the  one  side  and  the  hope  of  gain  on  the  other  have  pro- 
duced most  of  that  individual  initiative  which  has  been 
the  chief  lever  of  human  progress.  But  it  does  not  follow 
that  the  desire  of  wealth,  or  what  economists  call  self- 
interest,  is  the  whole  of  the  kinetics  of  civilization.  It 
may  be  granted  that  there  has  been  a  tendency  in  man- 
kind to  be  as  worthless  and  lazy  as  circumstances  would 
permit,  and  that  no  strong  race  has  developed,  except 
where  a  stern  struggle  for  a  livelihood  was  made  neces- 
sary by  an  unsmiling  nature,  and  still  it  may  be  doubted 
if  this  is  a  valid  law  of  human  nature  for  all  time.  Mr. 
Mallock  sees  in  greed  the  one  touch  of  nature  that  makes 
all  men  kin.  Is  not  that  a  most  unsatisfactory  analysis 
of  history  and  human  nature  ?  Love  of  country,  love  of 
wife  and  children,  love  of  friends,  love  of  mankind,  love 


298  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

of  truth,  love  of  beauty,  love  of  fame,  love  of  power  — 
these  are  motives  that  have  been  quite  as  powerful  as 
that  love  of  gain  which  economists  make  the  sole  founda- 
tion of  their  systems. 

Wealth  is  valued  for  the  power  that  its  possession  con- 
fers, for  the  luxury  that  it  makes  possible,  for  the  social 
distinction  that  it  purchases.  It  is  still  more  valued  be- 
cause it  is  the  accepted  test  of  success.  To  get  rich  is  the 
proving  of  one's  manhood  in  a  fierce  struggle  with  his  fel- 
lows ;  it  is  the  demonstration  of  superior  physical,  men- 
tal, and  moral  stamina.  For,  though  wealth  is  sometimes 
acquired  by  immoral  means,  its  acquisition  demands  cer- 
tain moral  qualities  :  self-control,  persistence,  integrity  — 
the  latter  not  measured  by  abstract  ethical  standards,  but 
by  the  recognized  rules  of  the  game.  Under  Socialism 
there  will  be  the  same  opportunities  of  power,  of  distinc- 
tion, as  now  exist.  Leaders,  directors,  will  be  even  more 
necessary  than  under  the  present  order,  and  the  need  will 
certainly  produce  the  men,  as  it  has  always  produced 
them.  As  for  pride,  the  love  of  honor,  it  might  be  made 
a  thousandfold  more  effective  than  now,  by  providing 
some  system  of  public  distinctions  for  those  who  give 
exceptional  service,  or  sacrifice  themselves  for  the  com- 
mon weal.  Among  the  Greeks,  the  crown  of  wild  oHve 
was  the  highest  of  all  distinctions,  and  to  win  it  demanded 
the  best  powers  of  mind  and  body  from  the  best-trained 
men  the  world  has  ever  seen.  The  golden  age  of  Athens 
which  produced  literature  and  art  never  since  surpassed 
did  not  reach  this  apical  achievement  by  virtue  of  any 
money  rewards.  Phidias  and  Praxiteles  received  only 
moderate  sums  for  their  incomparable  statues.  The  archi- 
tect who  designed  the  Parthenon  is  said  to  have  been 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  299 

paid  only  twice  as  much  as  the  stone-cutter  who  worked 
on  it ;  the  rest  of  his  pay  he  received  in  the  applause  of  his 
fellow-citizens.  iEschylus,  Sophocles,  Aristophanes,  were 
paid  in  fame,  not  in  money,  for  their  immortal  dramas, 
and  rich  citizens  were  ready  to  spend  large  sums  for  the 
honor  of  staging  such  plays.  Thucydides,  Demosthenes, 
Sappho,  Plato,  never  gained  an  obolus  by  their  writings; 
public  recognition  and  the  joy  of  their  work  were  their 
sole  and  sufficient  reward. 

The  sheer  felicity  of  exercising  one's  faculties  would 
be  motive  enough  for  a  vast  number,  especially  in  all 
lines  of  artistic  endeavor.  No  artist  paints,  or  poet 
writes,  or  orator  speaks,  chiefly  for  love  of  money.  Under 
our  present  system  he  must  have  money  to  live,  but  the 
artist  of  every  degree  and  kind  would  gladly  be  freed  from 
all  necessity  of  thinking  of  sordid  gain,  and  do  his  best  for 
his  art  out  of  pure  love  of  the  work.  And  this  is  as  true 
of  many  engaged  in  the  useful  arts  as  of  devotees  of  the 
fine  arts.  Many  a  mechanic,  many  a  man  of  business, 
has  the  same  feeling  at  the  bottom  of  his  soul,  and  toils 
for  the  pleasure  of  his  work  more  than  its  gain.  The 
medical  profession  affords  a  fine  instance  of  a  class  whose 
chief  motive  is  not  greed,  but  the  welfare  of  men.  A  large 
proportion  of  the  work  of  every  physician  and  surgeon, 
even  of  the  greatest  men  in  the  profession,  is  given  gratis 
to  those  who  are  too  poor  to  pay.  Hundreds  of  useful 
inventions  in  surgical  apparatus  have  marked  the  prog- 
ress of  the  art  of  healing,  but  the  man  who  should  patent 
such  a  device  and  by  means  of  it  exploit  the  afilicted  for 
his  gain,  would  be  promptly  ostracized  by  his  profession. 
Literature  is  no  exception  to  this  principle.  It  is  true 
that  Dr.  Johnson  said,  "Nobody  but  a  fool  ever  wrote 


300  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

except  for  money,"  but,  like  many  of  his  sayings,  it  was 
not  true.  On  the  contrary,  one  might  say  that  nobody 
ever  produced  Hterature  of  the  first  rank  who  wrote  chiefly 
for  money.  The  rapture  of  creation  is  its  own  reward. 
One  can  distinguish  in  the  work  of  Andrea  del  Sarto,  for 
example,  pictures  that  he  painted  because  with  all  his 
soul  he  loved  his  art,  and  pictures  that  he  painted  merely 
for  money,  as  tradition  says,  to  buy  jewels  to  adorn  his 
worthless  Lucrezia. 

Next  to  the  ecstacy  of  creation,  the  artist  desires  recog- 
nition, fame;  money  comes  last  of  all.  The  man  of 
science  finds  his  chief  reward  in  the  discovery  of  new  truth, 
and  next  to  that  in  the  recognition  of  his  work  by  the 
learned  world ;  as  for  money,  it  is  hardly  in  his  thoughts, 
except  as  a  means  of  continuing  his  work.  The  delight 
of  the  statesman  is  in  the  exercise  of  authority,  the  direc- 
tion of  public  opinion,  the  work  of  administration ;  the 
hope  of  gain  comes  last,  if  it  come  at  all.  Something  of 
the  soldier's  stern  joy  of  battle,  something  of  his  hope  of 
promotion  and  honors,  might  well  be  expected  to  enter 
into  a  large  proportion  of  the  citizens  of  a  socialized  state. 
Indeed,  an  army  helps  us  to  realize  many  of  the  probable 
features  of  Socialism.  An  army's  food,  clothing,  shelter, 
all  material  wants,  are  assured  by  the  State ;  it  lives  and 
dies  without  hope  or  wish  of  wealth  ;  but  how  cheerfully 
it  gives  its  services,  with  what  enthusiasm  does  it  hail 
the  day  of  battle  !  Under  a  social  state  that  would 
assure  leisure  and  opportunity  of  culture  to  all,  not  to  a 
few,  the  individual  bent  would  have  such  avenues  of  de- 
velopment and  exercise,  such  prospects  of  usefulness  and 
distinction,  as  would  inevitably  lead  to  the  highest  pos- 
sible achievement  in  all  departments  of  human  activity. 


THE  rDE.\LS  OF  SOCL\LISM  301 

SociaKsm  may  not  be  adapted  to  Orientals,  who  are 
credited  by  us  with  a  specialty  for  indolence,  but  the 
Caucasian  race  is  not  inherently  indolent.  On  the  con- 
trary, to  a  normal  Caucasian  nothing  is  more  abhorrent 
than  inaction.  A  child  is  the  closest  approach  to  per- 
petual motion  yet  discovered  or  de\dsed.  An  adult  must 
do  things  —  if  not  work,  then  he  m.ust  have  "sport." 
But  now,  when  men  are  compelled  to  work  as  they  can, 
not  as  they  would,  what  wonder  they  are  Kstless,  that  they 
shirk,  especially  when  they  consider  the  social  injustice 
of  their  lot,  how  their  labor  is  rewarded.  There  might  be 
reasonably  anticipated  in  a  sociaUstic  system  greater  lib- 
erty of  choice,  h}gienic  surroundings,  reasonable  hours, 
a  plentiful  reward,  everything  that  could  make  work 
attractive.  When  all  men  love  their  work  as  the  artist 
loves  his  —  and  it  is  not  untliinkable  —  the  industrial 
problem  will  be  a  problem  no  longer. 

The  present  and  past  incentives  to  effort  for  advance- 
ment have  been  and  are :  first,  the  pressure  of  necessity ; 
second,  the  hope  of  reward ;  third,  love  of  the  work  itself. 
It  is  a  reasonable  forecast  that  these  motives  will  remain 
unchanged  under  Socialism,  or  will  change  only  to  become 
more  effective.  The  pressure  of  necessity  will  be  dimin- 
ished as  to  the  individual,  not  as  to  society ;  all  that  man 
possesses  he  will  still  have  to  earn  by  sweat  of  brow  and 
brain.  The  force  of  the  second  motive  should  be  greatly 
increased,  as  hope  becomes  certainty,  as  men  are  assured 
that  they  labor  entirely  for  their  own.  benefit,  and  not 
for  others.  The  third  motive  is  at  least  capable  of  being 
made  the  strongest  of  the  three. 

One  other  important  question  remains  to  be  asked 
before  we  leave  this  subject  of  incentive :  What  incentive 


302  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

for  invention  will  there  be  under  a  socialized  order  ?  "I 
have  but  one  hght,"  said  Patrick  Henry,  "by  which  my 
feet  are  guided,  and  that  is  the  light  of  experience."  Un- 
til recently  the  inventor  has  been  little  influenced  by 
hope  of  gain.  All  the  fundamental  inventions  on  which 
civihzation  is  built  were  devised  by  unknown  persons 
under  the  prehistoric  communism :  such  as  the  potter's 
wheel,  the  lever,  the  sail,  rudder,  loom,  distaff,  the  smelt- 
ing of  metals,  and  the  making  of  gl^ss,  parchment,  and 
paper.  And  among  prehistoric  inventions  not  mechan- 
ical were  such  as  the  cultivation  of  cereals,  the  domesti- 
cation of  animals,  as  well  as  the  elements  of  art  —  en- 
graving, sculpture,  painting,  and,  most  important  of  all, 
writing.  Love  of  gain  played  no  important  part  in  such 
inventions.  There  was  little  advance  on  these  prehistoric 
discoveries  until  the  Middle  Ages,  when  the  use  of  the 
lens  was  discovered,  with  its  quickly  following  applications 
to  the  telescope  and  microscope.  The  mariner's  compass 
and  the  art  of  printing  followed.  And  the  notable  thing 
is,  that  in  the  case  of  all  these  mediaeval  discoveries,  which 
determined  the  advance  of  knowledge  and  the  progress 
of  civilization  for  the  next  three  centuries,  we  can  no  more 
certainly  say  who  was  the  inventor  of  any  than  we  can 
positively  ascertain  the  inventor  of  gunpowder,  which 
came  into  use  at  about  the  same  time. 

Even  in  the  last  great  century  of  invention,  when  the 
monopoly  of  "patents"  had  become  established,  the 
notable  prizes  that  fell  to  inventors  were  few,  and  did 
not  always  go  to  the  most  deserving.  James  Watt,  the 
inventor  of  the  steam-engine,  and  George  Stephenson,  the 
maker  of  the  first  locomotive,  won  but  a  modest  compet- 
ence as  the  result  of  a  lifetime's  work.     Hargraves  and 


THE  IDEALS   OF  SOCIALISM  303 

Arkwright,  inventors  of  cotton  spinning  and  weaving 
machinery,  had  their  patents  invalidated  by  legal  proceed- 
ings and  reaped  little  reward  from  them,  though  Ark- 
wright made  a  fortune  as  a  manufacturer.  EU  Whitney, 
inventor  of  the  cotton  gin,  obtained  almost  no  reward  for 
an  invention  that  transformed  the  world's  industries  and 
produced  a  great  civil  war.  The  inventor  of  the  slot 
machine,  Percival  Everitt,  died  a  pauper,  and  his  very 
name  is  unknown  to  the  thousands  that  daily  use  his 
device.  Morse,  Howe,  McCormick,  Bell,  Edison,  West- 
inghouse,  Pullman,  were  more  fortunate  and  received 
princely  rewards  for  their  inventions,  and  these  examples 
have  dazzled  many  Americans  and  inspired  the  hope  of 
other  great  fortunes,  —  hopes  that  would  be  moderated 
by  a  visit  to  the  United  States  Patent  Office  at  Washing- 
ton. There  is  no  more  pathetic  sight  than  that  great 
collection  of  models  of  useless  contrivances  and  blasted 
hopes.  If  an  invention  is  successful,  some  capitaUst 
nearly  always  contrives  to  cheat  the  inventor  out  of  the 
financial  reward  of  his  work. 

And  what  of  the  incentive  of  the  author  —  for  surely 
one  may  speak  of  the  grievance  of  his  own  craft.  Is  the 
mere  financial  motive  to  write  a  strong  one,  when  the 
writer  knows  that,  unless  he  produce  a  book  that  will 
become  one  of  the  "six  best  sellers,"  he  will  be  paid  less 
for  his  labor  than  the  unskilled  immigrant  who  digs  our 
ditches  ?  Can  it  be  truly  said  that  our  present  system  is 
peculiarly  adapted  to  encourage  these  higher  forms  of 
human  activity,  or  that  society  would  be  likely  to  suffer 
greatly  if  such  incentives  were  removed  ?  Neverthe- 
less, though  the  incentives  have  always  been  small,  the 
inventor  has  continued  to  invent  and  always  will,  irre- 


304  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

spective  of  reward ;  the  poet  and  the  philosopher  will 
write  and  the  artist  will  paint,  though  they  live  in  beg- 
gary and  die  in  the  poorhouse.  Encourage  invention, 
literature,  art?  The  world  cannot  discourage  them  by 
anything  short  of  hanging,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  even  that 
extreme  penalty  would  be  efficacious. 

But  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  Socialism  would 
greatly  stimulate  invention  and  all  the  forms  of  intellec- 
tual activity.  We  may  rely  upon  it  that  all  arduous  work 
would  be  speedily  made  less  arduous,  if  every  man  were 
required  to  do  manual  work.  The  powers  of  the  bright- 
est minds  would  be  at  once  concentrated  on  the  problem, 
How  to  discover  and  apply  labor-saving  machinery  and 
methods.  A  few  years  would  suffice  to  transform  the 
present  methods  by  which  the  world  gets  its  rough  and 
disagreeable  work  done  into  ways  comparatively  easy 
and  agreeable.  Capitahsm  has  introduced  machinery 
with  a  single  motive  :  the  making  of  a  profit.  Socialism 
will  consider,  not  profit,  but  benefit  to  man.  Labor  that 
is  interesting  in  itself  men  will  always  gladly  do ;  labor 
that  is  not  interesting  should  be  made  as  little  onerous 
as  possible,  and  the  same  is  true  of  labor  that  is  unduly 
exhausting.  More  and  more  we  shall  come  to  take  the 
human  view  instead  of  the  financial,  cease  to  look  at  the 
dollar  and  look  at  the  man. 

In  estimating  the  probable  advance  of  invention  we 
must  not  fail  to  take  into  account  the  certain  progress  of 
intelligence  under  Socialism.  Mr.  Lester  F.  Ward  tells 
us  that  "eleven  times  as  many  talented  persons  belong 
to  the  wealthy  or  well-to-do  classes  as  to  the  poor  or 
laboring  classes,  although  the  latter  are  about  five  times 
as  numerous  as  the  former.     Indigence  is  an  effective 


THE  IDE.\LS  OF  SOCIALISM  305 

bar  to  achievement."  ^  Mr.  Ward  holds  that  talent  is 
distributed  by  nature  about  equally  in  the  various  social 
ranks,  and  that  the  only  reason  why  the  wealthy  con- 
tribute more  to  invention  than  the  poor  is  because  their 
economic  condition  gives  them  the  opportunity.  Making 
all  allowance  due  for  the  possibility  of  error,  and  suppos- 
ing that  there  is  only  half  as  much  talent  in  the  lower 
classes  as  in  the  higher,  it  is  evident  that  improvement  in 
the  intelligence  and  economic  condition  of  the  lower  class 
would  result  in  an  enormous  increment  of  inventive  fac- 
ulty in  society  as  a  whole. 

vn 

Much  has  been  said,  and  said  truly,  of  the  lack  of  agree- 
ment among  the  advocates  of  Socialism,  and  many  critics 
make  merry  over  the  contradictory  arguments  advanced 
by  socialistic  writers.  Their  mirth  would  be  much 
diminished  if  they  should  examine  more  carefully  the 
objections  made  to  Socialism,  for  many  of  these  flatly 
contradict  each  other.  Mr.  Mallock,  as  we  have  seen, 
fears  that  if  Sociahsm  should  prevail,  the  world  would 
go  to  the  bow-wows,  because  men  would  no  longer  have 
adequate  motive  for  exertion.  Other  critics  fear  that 
men  would  have  too  much  motive  for  exertion  in  a  social- 
ized order  —  that  the  inevitable  appeal  to  ambition  would 
produce  a  system  of  Bosses.  It  is  argued  that  the  po- 
litical corruption  of  the  present  would  inevitably  become 
worse  with  every  enlargement  of  the  scope  of  govern- 
mental activity.     This  objection  will  disappear  when  a 

*"  Applied  Sociology,"  I:  529.     What  has  been   said  above  of  in- 
vention would  of  course  he  true  of  lilcrature,  science,  art,  and  all  the 
higher  callings  in  which  talent  is  an  indispensable  requisite  for  success. 
X 


3o6  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

larger  view  of  politics  is  taken  and  the  cause  of  present 
evils  is  correctly  diagnosed.  The  Boss  exists  only  on 
the  sufferance  of  the  people  and  as  an  aid  to  CapitaUsm. 
Political  corruption  is  directly  traceable  to  the  capitaKstic 
system  :  its  root  is  the  effort  of  the  capitahst  class  to  pro- 
mote their  fortunes  and  retain  power.  Capitalism  bribes 
voters  to  secure  the  election  of  its  tools ;  corrupts  legis- 
latures, in  part  to  procure  favorable  legislation,  in  part 
to  avert  unfavorable.  It  is  suspected  of  bribing  courts, 
and  more  than  suspected  of  packing  the  courts  with  its 
retainers.  It  subsidizes  and  controls  a  large  part  of  the 
press,  which  conceals  the  worst  of  these  facts  from  the 
public,  and  when  the  facts  can  no  longer  be  concealed  or 
denied,  apologizes  for  them  and  resists  reform  or  the  pun- 
ishment of  the  guilty.  It  has  put  the  pulpit  under  bonds, 
by  its  support  of  the  churches  and  its  gifts  to  missionary 
enterprises,  and  has  muzzled  the  teacher  by  endowments 
of  educational  institutions  and  pensioning  of  veterans. 
It  must  dominate  government  and  control  public  senti- 
ment or  perish,  and  until  now  it  has  succeeded  in  domi- 
nating, but  at  what  an  ethical  cost ! 

Within  a  few  years,  these  abuses  of  the  powers  of  gov- 
ernment, and  of  social  and  educational  institutions,  have 
opened  the  eyes  of  many  to  the  fact  that  we  are  ruled  by 
a  privileged  class,  by  means  of  bribery,  corruption,  and 
intimidation.  Popular  rule  is  seen  to  be  a  joke  in  the 
United  States ;  we  have  a  government  of  the  "interests," 
by  the  "interests,"  and  for  the  "interests."  We  call  our- 
selves a  repubhc  and  wonder  that  England  still  tolerates 
its  House  of  Lords  —  not  perceiving  that  we  have  a  house 
of  lords,  self-made  lords  of  industry  ;  that  we  pay  in  taxes 
what  they  choose  to  assess,  that  we  have  as  laws  what 


THE  roEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  307 

they  are  pleased  to  permit  to  be  enacted ;  that  we  have 
no  rights  left  but  such  as  they  have  not  as  yet  cared  to 
take  from  us. 

Now  it  is  plain  that  the  very  first  step  towards  Social- 
ism would  by  just  so  much  lessen  all  these  e\dls ;  and 
every  subsequent  step  would  lessen  them  proportionally, 
by  the  removal  of  the  motive  for  this  corruption,  and 
likewise  the  povv^er  by  which  it  is  sustained.  With  the 
disappearance  of  CapitaHsm  the  evils  would  disappear, 
for  their  motive  would  be  lacking.  The  supposed  objec- 
tion to  SociaUsm,  when  the  facts  are  duly  taken  into  con- 
sideration, becomes  one  of  the  strongest  arguments  in 
its  favor.  It  promises  the  complete  cure  of  a  disease  that 
is  sapping  the  very  life  of  the  body  politic.  Men  do  not 
commit  crimes  against  society,  on  any  considerable  scale 
at  least,  without  an  obvious  and  powerful  motive.  As  for 
the  Boss,  he  lives  on  corruption  and  would  be  impossible 
without  corruption.  We  have  been  considering,  not  an 
objection  to  Socialism,  but  a  bogey. 

vin 

The  promised  order  of  the  future  is  believed  by  some 
to  be  socially  undesirable  :  it  would  produce  a  social  con- 
dition of  uniformity,  monotony,  stagnation.  This  ob- 
jection takes  a  variety  of  forms.  It  is  said  that  if  the 
state  is  the  only  employer,  talent  could  not  get  its  fair 
price  and  its  development  would  be  discouraged ;  that 
no  sufficient  place  is  made  in  Socialism  for  the  higher  pur- 
suits, the  learned  and  artistic  professions,  and  so  on.  It  is 
evident  that  this  objection  to  Socialism,  like  many  of  the 
arguments  in  its  favor,  is  entirely  a  priori,  and  its  validity 
can  only  be  determined  by  experience.     The  only  reply 


3o8  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

possible  at  present  is  of  the  same  a  priori  nature  as  the 
objection  itself.  It  seems  reasonable  that  Socialism 
might  make  possible  greater  variety  and  higher  intellec- 
tual and  artistic  development  than  the  present  social 
order,  since  it  plans  to  give  every  human  being  opportu- 
nity to  make  the  best  of  whatever  capacity  may  be  latent 
in  him.  Some  of  the  present  professions  might  disappear 
under  SociaKsm,  or  at  least  be  reduced  to  very  small 
limits  —  that  of  the  law,  for  example.  Lawyers  and 
courts  would  find  their  useful  functions  growing  less,  until 
they  finally  approached  the  vanishing  point.  The  pro- 
fession of  medicine  might  be  reduced  to  the  Hmit  of  actual 
social  usefulness.  On  the  other  hand,  some  professions 
would  probably  be  greatly  increased  in  numbers  and  ex- 
tent of  usefulness,  especially  the  profession  of  teaching. 
Certain  other  callings,  not  now  dignified  by  the  name  of 
profession,  would  tend  to  disappear :  the  police,  for  ex- 
ample, would  be  far  less  needed ;  firemen  could  be  prac- 
tically retired  from  business  by  the  erection  of  fire-proof 
buildings  alone,  with  mechanical  contrivances  within 
them  for  the  extinguishing  of  any  small  fire  that  might 
be  caused  by  carelessness  or  accident. 

The  effectiveness  of  all  professions  might  be  greatly 
enhanced  in  a  socialized  order,  by  having  them  com- 
posed only  of  volunteers,  who  should  duly  quahfy  them- 
selves for  practice  and  be  licensed  by  authority.  Men 
and  women  of  the  professions  would  then  do  their  work 
as  producers,  like  others,  and  spend  a  part  of  their  leisure 
hours  in  the  study  and  practice  of  their  chosen  calling. 
Men  would  not  enter  a  profession  then  as  a  mere  means  of 
making  a  living,  which  now  causes  every  calling  to  be 
overcrowded  with  incompetents,  but  because  they  had 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM 


309 


a  natural  aptitude  and  liking  for  it ;  and  they  would  work, 
not  for  pay,  but  for  the  sake  of  their  art  or  science.  Why 
should  not  such  a  system  produce  far  greater  proficiency 
in  all  professions  than  is  now  known  ?  The  medical  pro- 
fession even  now  witnesses  to  the  innate  capacity  of  men 
to  serve  their  fellows  from  the  highest  motives.  There 
is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  medicine  attracts  men  of 
higher  nature  than  law  or  hterature ;  it  merely  offers 
higher  opportunities.  In  more  senses  than  one  men  feel 
themselves  to  be  the  heirs  of  all  the  ages  ;  they  know  that 
we  who  are  now  here  on  the  earth  owe  a  vast  debt  to 
antiquity  that  we  can  pay  only  to  posterity.  The  call 
to  heroism  still  falls  on  men  who  have  ears  to  hear  —  not 
in  vain  comes  the  summons  to  high  endeavor. 

Then  welcome  each  rebuff 
That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough, 
Each  sting  that  bids,  nor  sit,  nor  stand,  but  go  ! 

Be  our  joys  three  parts  pain  ! 

Strive  and  hold  cheap  the  strain. 

Especially  does  this  seem  to  be  true  of  all  forms  and 
degrees  of  art.  All  artists  should,  and  most  artists  do, 
love  their  art  supremely.  The  constant  plaint  of  the 
painter  is  that  he  must  turn  out  pot-boilers  when  he  would 
fain  attempt  a  masterpiece  —  of  the  poet  that  he  must  do 
hack-work  for  a  living  instead  of  com.posing  an  epic. 
No  doubt  most  artists  deceive  themselves  about  their 
capabihties ;  pot-boilers  and  hack-work  are  a  better 
measure  of  their  genius  than  Madonnas  and  epics.  Most 
of  us  who  spoil  good  white  paper  by  putting  on  it  what 
we  are  pleased  to  consider  our  ideas  could  never,  under 
any  circumstances,  write  anything  that  the  world  would 


310  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

not  willingly  let  die.  The  "mute,  inglorious  Miltons" 
probably  never  existed  outside  of  a  poet's  lively  imagina- 
tion. But,  at  any  rate.  Socialism  would  remove  this 
excuse  —  or  this  obstacle,  as  one  pleases  —  and  make  it 
possible  for  any  man  who  had  anything  to  say  to  the 
world  to  express  it  at  his  best,  on  paper,  on  canvas,  in 
marble. 

For  some  professions,  Socialism  would  be  an  emanci- 
pation. For  example,  journalism,  in  theory  one  of  the 
noblest  callings,  in  practice  one  of  the  vilest.  It  is  now 
completely  subservient  to  two  masters,  party  spirit  and 
Capitalism.  Publishing  a  newspaper  has  become  a  purely 
commercial  enterprise,  and  this  is  as  true  of  the  "religious  " 
press  as  of  the  secular.  A  newspaper  exists  by  virtue, 
first  of  its  subscription  list,  recruited  from  a  party  or  a 
denomination ;  and  even  for  the  so-called  "independent" 
papers,  whether  religious  or  secular,  there  is  a  definite 
constituency  who  are  more  or  less  of  a  certain  way  of 
thinking.  The  paper  must  please  them  or  lose  its  readers. 
The  profits  depend  on  advertisements,  as  the  sale  of  the 
paper  does  not  more  than  meet  the  cost  of  production, 
and  seldom  does  even  that.  It  is  inevitable  that  the 
editing  of  the  paper  should  be  influenced  by  these  con- 
siderations. The  news  and  editorial  columns  tell,  not  the 
truth,  but  that  version  of  events  which  will  be  most  likely 
to  please  the  readers  and  least  likely  to  offend  advertisers. 
In  the  case  of  many  journals,  they  are  openly  edited  from 
the  counting-room,  and  make  little  pretense  of  a  higher 
virtue  than  giving  the  people  what  they  want.  Others 
assume  a  higher  virtue,  without  giving  any  evidence  of 
possessing  it.  The  business  of  the  press  as  a  dissemi- 
nator of  news  is  seriously  impaired  by  this  commercialism, 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  311 

and  the  proper  function  of  the  newspaper,  as  teacher  and 
prophet,  is  nearly  gone.  None  but  the  very  ignorant, 
or  the  very  credulous,  permit  themselves  to  be  seriously 
influenced  by  what  they  read  in  the  newspapers,  because 
men  have  lost  all  confidence  in  the  truthfulness  and  hon- 
esty of  those  who  conduct  our  journals.  The  press  is 
known  to  be  as  venal  and  corrupt  ^  as  the  bosses  whom  it 
denounces  with  so  fine  a  show  of  superior  virtue.  But 
in  a  socialistic  order  newspapers  would  belong  to  the 
community  and  would  be  published  for  the  benefit  of  all. 
The  temptation  to  falsify  news  and  dissemble  opinions 
would  be  removed ;  energy  and  talent  could  be  concen- 
trated in  the  collection  and  impartial  interpretation  of 
the  world's  news,  and  the  press  might  become,  what  it 
ought  to  be,  a  people's  university. 


rx 

Men  complain  of  Socialism  most  frequently  and  most 
loudly,  perhaps,  that  it  will  abohsh  liberty.  Socialism 
is  conceived  as  looking  forward  to  a  social  condition  in 

^  For  example,  the  reciprocity  bill  enacted  in  191 1,  to  give  eflect  to 
a  treaty  negotiated  with  Canada  by  President  Taft,  contained  a  clause 
for  the  free  admission  into  the  United  States  of  Canadian  wood-pulp 
used  in  the  manufacture  of  the  cheap  white  paper  on  which  newspapers 
are  printed.  The  bribe  was  sufficient.  Carefully  concealing  from 
their  readers  the  fact  that  they  were  beneficiaries,  the  newspapers 
of  the  United  States,  without  regard  to  party,  supported  the  bill  and 
manipulated  their  news  columns  freely  to  create  public  sentiment  in 
its  favor.  Canada  rejected  reciprocity,  and  the  bill  as  a  whole  remains 
nugatory ;  but  this  single  clause  was  made  unconditional  and  went 
into  immediate  effect.  The  only  newspaper  that  had  courage  to  tell 
the  whole  truth  about  this  disgraceful  transaction  was  the  Outlook,  a 
religious  weekly  (strange  coincidence  ! )  that  is  printed  on  paper  of  too 
high  a  grade  to  profit  by  this  change  in  the  tariff. 


312  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

which,  in  a  sinister  sense  that  the  poet  did  not  intend, 

The  individyal  withers  and  the  world  is  more  and  more. 

"Under  SociaKsm,"  said  a  public  speaker  recently,  "man 
would  hardly  own  his  own  soul."  To  which  a  socialist 
might  rejoin,  that  under  Socialism  a  man  would  for  the 
first  time  have  a  soul  worth  owning.  The  late  philoso- 
pher, Herbert  Spencer,  was  perhaps  the  most  prominent 
in  objecting  to  "the  new  slavery,"  as  he  was  pleased  to 
label  Sociahsm.^  In  his  earlier  writings  Mr.  Spencer  said 
many  things  that  pointed  in  the  direction  of  collectivism, 
but  in  his  later  years  he  conceived  a  violent  dislike  for 
the  theory.  Not  long  before  his  death  he  wrote  to  an 
inquiring  friend  a  letter,  summarizing  his  views,  and 
authorizing  their  publication  :  (i)  Socialism  will  triumph 
inevitably,  in  spite  of  all  opposition ;  (2)  its  establishment 
will  be  the  greatest  disaster  that  the  world  has  ever  known  ; 
(3)  sooner  or  later  it  will  be  brought  to  an  end  by  a  mili- 
tary despotism.  Mr.  Spencer  might  conceivably  be 
right  in  the  first  prediction,  and  prove  to  be  wrong  in  the 
other  two.  But  without  discussing  the  value  of  any  of 
the  predictions  as  such,  do  they  not  throv/  a  strong  light 
on  a  prevalent  misapprehension  regarding  the  nature  of 
liberty,  and  the  probable  effect  of  Socialism,  should  that 
prevail  ? 

It  is  the  paradox  of  freedom  that  the  less  liberty  a  man 

^  Many  of  Mr.  Spencer's  admirers  and  echoes  have  failed  to  appre- 
ciate the  fact  that  he  criticised  and  opposed  Socialism  because  he  was  es- 
sentially an  anarchist.  Anarchy  is  only  the  logical  deduction,  and  it 
is  the  only  logical  deduction,  from  Spencer's  premises  of  individualism  and 
liberty.  As  Mr.  Hillquit  aptly  says,  "  The  theories  of  Herbert  Spencer 
and  those  of  John  Most  differ  but  in  degree,  not  in  quality."  —  "History 
of  Socialism  in  the  United  States,"  p.  233. 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM 


313 


has  the  more  liberty  he  enjoys,  the  greater  the  number 
of  his  voluntary  restraints  the  less  he  is  restrained.  Or, 
as  Cicero  put  it  long  ago,  Legum  omnes  servi  sumus,  ut 
liheri  esse  possimiis}  Compare  the  liberty  of  the  savage 
with  that  of  the  civihzed  man.  For  the  savage  there  are 
almost  no  restraints  save  those  of  nature,  but  he  speedily 
discovers  that  there  is  no  despot  like  nature.  Hence  the 
savage  has  but  a  minimum  of  possibilities ;  he  has  no  real 
liberty.  The  civilized  man  is  surrounded  by  restraints  — • 
of  habit,  of  custom,  of  law  —  but  how  indefinitely  greater 
his  real  hberty,  because  of  the  indefinitely  larger  number 
of  things  he  may  do  and  enjoy.  Freedom  is  not  negative 
but  positive ;  it  is  not  mere  absence  of  restraint,  but  pres- 
ence of  opportunity.  If  you  give  a  poor  man  a  thousand 
dollars,  you  have  greatly  increased  his  freedom,  by  mul- 
tiplying the  things  that  he  can  do.  Other  things  being 
equal,  the  strong  have  more  freedom  than  the  weak,  the 
educated  than  the  ignorant,  the  rich  than  the  poor. 
Civilization  that  frees  us  from  restraints  also  multiplies 
restraints,  but  at  the  same  time  multiplies  possibilities 
of  action  and  enjoyment,  and  hence  promotes  freedom. 
The  restraints  of  law  are  trifling  in  their  pressure  on  the 
working-man,  even  in  despotic  Russia,  compared  with  the 
restraints  of  poverty.  To  make  a  man,  it  is  needful  to 
make  him  rich  —  that  is,  give  him  enough  to  live  a 
civilized  life.  It  is  not  law,  therefore,  but  poverty  that 
hinders  freedom  in  a  civilized  society,  and  Socialism  is 
the  attempt  to  release  men  forever  from  the  restraints  of 
poverty  and  correspondingly  to  enlarge  real  liberty. 

Any  price  in  the  way  of  additional  voluntary  restraint 
that  might  have  to  be  paid  for  such  a  result  would  be 

'  Oratio  pro  Cluenlio,  53. 


314  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

cheap,  in  any  view  of  the  case.  It  is  indeed  possible  that 
the  Hberty  of  a  few,  of  those  who  now  enjoy  most  Hberty, 
might  be  somewhat  curtailed  in  the  course  of  socialistic 
evolution,  though  it  is  not  certain  that  any  justifiable 
and  reasonable  liberty  would  be  lost  by  any;  but  the 
vast  majority  of  mankind  would  be  certain  to  gain,  and 
the  welfare  of  the  vast  majority  must  be  the  paramount 
consideration.  For  the  working-man  Socialism  has  no 
possible  terrors,  not  even  extreme  State  Sociahsm.  Why 
try  to  scare  him  by  telling  him  that  the  State  will  dictate 
to  him  what  sort  of  work  he  shall  do,  and  the  number  of 
hours  he  shall  do  it  ?  Necessity  has  always  dictated  his 
work,  and  his  boss  has  dictated  the  hours.  He  expects 
to  gain,  not  lose,  by  a  change  of  dictation,  and  it  is  hardly 
possible  that  he  should  be  disappointed.  "Let  no  man 
talk  of  the  regimentation  of  the  people  under  Socialism ; 
every  shopman,  clerk,  or  factory  hand  is  drilled  into 
absolute  uniformity  of  action  now."  ^  A  man  chooses 
his  trade  or  occupation  under  the  present  system  —  in 
theory;  in  reality,  he  takes  whatever  work  he  can  get. 
The  number  of  those  who  can  engage  in  a  given  occupa- 
tion is  now  regulated  by  irresponsible  individuals,  namely, 
those  who  choose  to  establish  industries  affording  that 
sort  of  occupation.  Doesranybody  seriously  think  that 
the  tyranny  of  a  bureau,^  conducted  with  some  regard 

1  Villiers,  "The  Socialist  Movement  in  England,"  London,  1908,  p.  239. 

^  But  why  worry  ourselves  about  a  bureau  —  happy  name  !  the  thing 
is  so  uniformly  wooden  —  which  is  necessitated  only  by  a  single  form  of 
socialistic  theory,  State  Socialism.  State  Socialism  is  paternal  and  auto- 
cratic; it  would  endeavor  to  regulate  production  by  regulating  persons. 
Marxian  Socialism,  which  has  by  far  the  larger  number  of  adherents, 
would  regulate  production  and  leave  persons  to  regulate  themselves.  The 
former  implies  a  bureaucracy,  the  latter  is  consistent  with  perfect  democ- 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  315 

to  actual  social  conditions  and  subject  to  the  people's 
control,  would  be  worse  than  the  tyranny  of  the  present 
haphazard  methods  ? 

Why  do  men  so  generally  dismiss  their  imaginations, 
and  put  their  brains  to  sleep,  when  they  begin  the  dis- 
cussion of  Sociahsm  ?  Let  us  look  candidly  at  this  notion 
of  the  curtailment  of  the  liberty  of  workers  by  Socialism. 
What  is  the  daily  life  of  the  mechanic,  the  factory  hand, 
the  clerk,  the  unskilled  worker?  They  rise,  snatch  an 
early  breakfast  while  many  of  us  are  asleep,  and  are  at 
their  tasks  by  seven  o'clock  or  earlier.  They  toil  hard, 
many  of  them  with  only  a  half  hour's  intermission  for 
rest  and  luncheon,  until  six  in  the  evening  or  later.  Many 
labor  twelve  and  fourteen  hours,  fortunate  are  those  who 
have  ordy  ten,  and  a  few  of  the  aristocracy  of  labor  get 
off  with  eight.  At  the  close  of  the  day,  most  of  them  are 
utterly  exhausted  in  body  and  stupid  of  mind  —  they 
eat  their  supper,  smoke  a  pipe,  or  gossip  a  little,  some  of 
them  stray  away  to  the  saloon  for  an  hour  or  two ;  then 
they  tumble  into  bed,  and  — ■  da  capo.  Not  only  six  days 
of  the  week,  but  many  toil  seven  in  this  deadly  round  that 
ends  only  with  the  grave.  The  wives  of  men  who  thus 
labor  are  working  equally  hard  in  the  home,  often  even 
harder,  and  always  longer  hours,  for,  as  the  old  rhyme 
has  it,  "woman's  work  is  never  done."  The  children  are 
taken  out  of  school  as  early  as  the  law  permits,  and 
too  often  earlier,  and  put  to  work,  that  they  may  add 
something  to  the  slender  income  of  the  family.  Is 
this  any  fancy  picture?     Those  who  know  the  life  of 

racy.  The  Roman  Catholic  Church,  while  suspicious  of  State  Socialism, 
is  not  necessarily  inimical  to  it,  but  it  is  irreconcilably  opposed  to  Marxian 
Socialism.     What  it  really  opposes  is  not  so  much  Socialism  as  democracy. 


31 6  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

the  working  people  know  that  it  barely  does  justice  to 
the  reality. 

Now  to  such  a  laborer,  Socialism  comes  and  says : 
''I  offer  you  in  exchange  for  this  hard  and  joyless  life  of 
yours,  ease  and  plenty  and  rational  pleasure.  You  shall 
have  a  good  house  to  live  in,  with  abundance  of  light  and 
air,  and  equipped  with  every  comfort.  You  shall  have 
as  good  food  as  anybody,  as  good  clothes  to  wear.  Eight 
hours  shall  be  yours  for  sleep,  and  ten  hours  more  a  day 
for  leisure,  to  be  spent  exactly  as  you  please.  Open-air 
recreations  will  be  provided  without  cost ;  there  will  be 
lectures  and  theatres  and  whatever  private  social  en- 
tertainments you  desire.  There  will  be  libraries,  where 
the  best  books  can  be  had,  galleries  where  the  best  art 
may  be  studied,  concerts  where  the  best  music  may  be 
heard.  If  you  have  a  thirst  for  knowledge,  there  will  be 
universities  in  which  you  may  be  a  learner,  laboratories  in 
which  you  may  pursue  investigations,  not  for  four  years 
merely,  but  as  long  as  you  please.  If  you  have  the  crea- 
tive impulse,  you  shall  write  books,  or  paint  pictures,  or 
mould  statues,  or  invent  new  machinery,  or  compose 
music,  to  your  heart's  content.  There  is  no  limit  to  what 
you  may  do  or  what  you  may  become,  but  your  own 
desire  and  your  own  talent  and  industry. 

"On  your  part,  you  must  work  for  six  hours,  on  six 
days  of  the  week,  or  possibly  for  only  four  hours,  at  what- 
ever labor  may  be  assigned  you.  If  you  are  put  to  farm- 
ing, you  shall  have  the  best  machinery  and  every  facility 
for  doing  your  work  in  the  least  laborious  way.  If  you 
are  sent  to  a  mine,  everything  that  scientific  knowledge 
or  engineering  skill  or  mechanical  ingenuity  can  do  shall 
be  done  to  make  your  work  as  safe  and  pleasant  as  it  can 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  317 

be  made.  If  you  are  assigned  to  a  factory,  it  shall  be 
well  Kghted  and  ventilated  and  warmed,  and  every  ap- 
pliance for  safety  that  can  be  devised  and  all  that  sani- 
tary science  can  suggest  shall  be  supplied  for  the  health 
and  comfort  of  workers.  Labor  shall  be  freed  from  most 
of  its  dangerous  and  disagreeable  features,  and  the  process 
of  making  a  Hving  will  be  made  comparatively  safe,  easy, 
and  pleasant.  Moreover,  as  all  members  of  society  will 
engage  in  ^useful  and  productive  labor,  work  will  be  dig- 
nified and  honorable.  All  that  is  asked  of  you  in  return 
for  what  is  offered  is,  that  you  submit  to  competent  direc- 
tion and  do  your  work  faithfully ;  and  so  far  as  possible 
you  will  be  assigned  a  task  appropriate  to  your  abiHties 
and  tastes." 

Suppose  the  power  to  make  this  offer  and  to  fulfil  its 
terms.  Would  the  world's  workers  part  with  any  great 
amount  of  liberty  in  order  to  accept  it?  Would  it  be 
a  hardship,  would  it  be  slavery,  for  any  of  us  to  live  under 
such  a  regime?  Undoubtedly  a  few  of  the  rich  would 
have  to  part  with  some  of  their  present  power  and  lux- 
ury, but  how  much  better  would  be  the  lot  of  humanity 
as  a  whole  !  The  greater  portion  of  any  community 
would  be  delivered  from  a  present  condition  that  is  but 
one  remove  from  slavery,  and  for  the  first  time  would 
become  free  men  and  women  —  as  free  as  any  can  possibly 
be  who  live  in  a  society,  and  therefore  have  obligations 
towards  their  fellows  from  which  nothing  can  ever  free 
them.  This  is  what  Socialism  holds  out  to  the  worker. 
It  is  permissible  to  doubt  whether  such  glowing  promises 
can  be  fulfilled,  whether  so  lofty  a  social  ideal  is  realizable ; 
but  to  call  such  an  ideal  slavery  is  surely  the  height  of 
absurdity. 


3l8  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 


X 

What  effect  may  Socialism,  if  it  becomes  established, 
be  expected  to  have  on  crime  and  vice  ?  In  the  new 
order  of  society  we  may  expect  to  see  crime  treated  as  we 
are  coming  to  treat  disease,  the  "great  white  plague," 
for  example.  The  criminal  is  an  abnormal  person,  and 
as  such  is  dangerous  to  society ;  like  a  man  with  the  small- 
pox, he  is  a  source  of  infection  to  others.  First  of  all  he 
must  be  quarantined,  and  then,  if  possible,  cured ;  if 
cure  prove  impossible,  the  quarantine  should  be  made 
perpetual.  In  the  family  it  sometimes  happens  that  a 
member  is  not  controlled  by  love  but  by  selfishness ;  and 
if  he  cannot  be  won  by  loving  persuasion  to  a  better  mind 
and  a  better  conduct,  there  must  be  some  exercise  of  au- 
thority for  his  restraint  and  punishment,  as  a  means  of 
winning  him.  So  in  the  larger  family,  society,  the  selfish 
and  the  greedy  and  the  violent  must  sometimes  be  re- 
strained and  punished.  But  force  is  to  be  used  against 
the  criminal,  not  vindictively,  but  in  accordance  with  the 
law  of  love,  to  protect  the  weak  and  to  win  the  erring  to 
better  ways. 

A  new  criminology  is  one  of  society's  greatest  needs, 
and  is  even  now  on  its  way  to  recognition  and  establish- 
ment. By  rational  treatment  crime  may  be  greatly 
reduced,  and  in  time  may  be  expected  nearly  to  disap- 
pear. All  the  present  crimes  against  property  would 
surely  disappear  with  the  temptation  to  commit  them. 
Increasing  refinement  and  training  in  self-control  and  the 
arts  of  social  life  would  lessen  the  number  and  brutality 
of  crimes  against  the  person.  All  the  social  vices  and 
most  of  the  social  crimes  are  greatly  aggravated,  if  not 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM 


319 


altogether  caused,  by  the  present  keen  struggle  for  exist- 
ence. Yet  there  is  grave  reason  to  doubt  whether  vice 
and  crime  will  ever  disappear,  as  a  result  of  an  improved 
environment  simply.  In  the  unbridled  lust  of  the  flesh 
among  the  rich  and  well-to-do,  we  find  a  large  part  of  the 
support  of  vice  and  the  incitement  to  crime.  Why  should 
we  expect  to  see  passion  better  controlled,  merely  because 
all  men  have  become  well-to-do  ?  Until  men  and  women 
are  radically  changed  in  character,  we  cannot  expect  so 
radical  a  change  in  society. 

And  there  is  one  class  of  evils  that  depend  almost  wholly 
on  the  individual,  very  little  on  the  environment  —  those 
social  wrongs  that  grow  out  of  ambition,  jealousy,  hate, 
lust.  How  can  these  be  rationally  expected  to  disappear 
with  advance  of  social  comfort  ?  So  far  as  any  of  them 
are  aggravated  by  present  economic  conditions,  we  may 
expect  amelioration  with  economic  advance,  but  the  only 
cure  for  evils  is  to  cure  their  cause.  That  means,  that 
we  must  secure  the  regeneration  of  man.  But  that  can- 
not be  done  by  increasing  his  wealth,  for  it  is  by  no 
means  the  present  experience  that  the  richest  are  the 
most  ethical. 

What  effect  may  be  fairly  expected  from  the  progress  of 
Socialism  on  the  vice  of  intemperance,  for  example? 
Socialists  have  been  unwise  thus  far  in  not  making  active 
war  on  the  saloon,  for,  to  say  nothing  of  its  incitement  to 
vice,  all  the  evils  of  Capitalism  are  sublimed  in  the  saloon. 
Socialism,  being  above  all  a  theory  of  the  economic  bet- 
terment of  the  whole  people,  cannot  ignore  the  frightful 
waste  involved  in  the  consumption  of  alcohol.  A  con- 
servative estimate  of  the  drink  bill  of  the  United  States 
is  two  billion  dollars  a  year  paid  out  by  the  consumers 


320  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

of  the  liquors  manufactured  and  imported.  Sums  so 
immense  can  mean  nothing,  until  we  find  some  unit  of 
measurement  that  will  bring  them  within  our  compre- 
hension. Two  billion  dollars  is  a  sum  nearly  equal  to 
the  entire  gold  and  silver  money  of  the  United  States; 
it  is  two  hundred  million  dollars  more  than  the  combined 
capital  of  our  national  banks.  Two  billion  dollars  would 
pay  our  national  debt  twice  over,  and  leave  a  surplus  of 
two  hundred  millions ;  it  would  pay  the  total  appropria- 
tions of  Congress  for  about  three  years ;  it  would  build 
a  fleet  of  two  hundred  Dreadnoughts,  such  a  fleet  as  the 
world  never  saw  or  dreamed  of;  one  sixth  of  it  would 
pay  for  the  Panama  Canal ;  it  is  a  sum  exceeding  the 
total  assessed  value  of  the  property  of  Philadelphia  or 
Boston,  or  of  the  States  of  Illinois,  Indiana,  Michigan, 
Minnesota,  or  Missouri.  Owing  to  the  flimsy  construc- 
tion of  buildings,  the  loss  by  fire  is  probably  greater  in 
the  United  States  than  in  any  other  country  in  the  world ; 
but  we  drink  up  in  one  year  as  much  as  fire  costs  our  in- 
surance companies  in  ten  years.  And  this  attempt  to 
measure  the  drink  bill,  so  as  to  make  its  extent  compre- 
hensible, excludes  any  estimate  of  the  indirect  costs  of 
alcohol  —  what  the  taxpayer  has  to  contribute  for  the 
prevention  and  punishment  of  alcohol-caused  crime ; 
for  the  rehef  of  alcohol-made  paupers;  and  the  large 
voluntary  tax  for  the  support  of  asylums  and  hospitals, 
largely  filled  with  the  victims  of  alcohol.  The  cost  of 
the  criminal  law  and  of  charity  is  mainly  chargeable  to  a 
vain  effort  of  society  to  repair  the  damage  that  alcohol  is 
doing  every  year. 

All  this  is  economic  waste  that  can  easily  be  expressed 
in  dollars.     But  what  shall  we  say  of  that  other  social 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  32 1 

waste  that  is  expressible  only  in  terras  of  life  and  happi- 
ness ?  If  alcohol  only  seized  upon  the  vile  and  the  vicious, 
we  might  look  on  with  comparative  equanimity,  in  spite 
of  its  enormous  cost.  But  it  clutches  the  brightest  and 
best.  Only  the  eye  and  mind  of  Omniscience  can  know 
and  compute  the  greatness  of  this  loss.  But  those  who 
have  lived  long  enough  to  see  some  of  the  most  promising 
young  men  of  their  generation  utterly  ruined  by  intem- 
perance can  roughly  estimate  the  loss  to  the  world  of 
these,  and  such  as  these  for  ages  past.  Minds  that  might 
have  added  to  the  happiness  and  extended  the  knowledge 
of  mankind,  or  promoted  the  progress  of  civihzation  by 
invention  and  discovery,  have  brought  to  the  world 
nothing  but  sorrow  and  shame.  Men  who  might  have 
become  leaders  of  their  fellows  in  State  and  Church,  in 
literature  and  art,  have  died  and  left  behind  nothing  but 
pain,  and  a  memory  that  their  dearest  obliterate  as 
quickly  as  possible. 

Only  recently  have  American  socialists  had  the  courage 
and  wisdom  to  declare  themselves  in  favor  even  of  tem- 
perance, and  they  are  openly  opposed  to  prohibition. 
They  have  done  good  service,  however,  in  emphasizing 
the  fact  that  intemperance  is  greatly  aggravated  among 
the  poorer  classes  by  their  poverty,  and  the  squalor  and 
misery  that  go  with  poverty  in  the  great  cities.  Friends 
of  the  temperance  cause  must  realize  more  clearly  than 
they  have  in  the  past  that  closing  the  saloon  will  accom- 
plish little  good,  so  long  as  the  demand  for  drink  con- 
tinues —  the  "speak  easy"  and  the  "blind  tiger"  in  that 
case  will  simply  take  the  place  of  the  saloon,  and  the  evil  is 
hardly  touched.  They  should  not  forget,  as  reformers  have 
been  too  prone  to  do,  that  men  must  be  won,  not  driven, 

Y 


322  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

to  virtue  —  that  reforms  forced  on  an  unwilling  commu- 
nity accomplish  nothing  but  revolt  and  ethical  confusion 
worse  confounded.  Better  material  conditions  must  be 
provided  for  the  poorer  classes  before  marked  improve- 
ment in  temperance  can  be  rationally  anticipated.  That 
drunkenness  is  a  cause  of  poverty  is  generally  recognized, 
but  it  is  becoming  clear  that  it  is  also  an  effect  —  men  are 
poor  because  they  drink  and  they  drink  because  they  are 
poor. 

Alcohol  in  all  its  forms  harms  the  working-man  most, 
because  his  organism  is  less  strong  and  well  nourished. 
He  may  have  as  much  muscular  power  as  the  man  of  the 
higher  classes,  or  even  more,  but  he  has  not  the  same 
toughness  of  constitution.  The  actuaries'  tables  of  our 
insurance  companies  show  a  marked  difference  in  the 
"expectation  of  life"  between  the  upper  and  lower  classes 
of  the  American  people.  Alcoholic  beverages  injure  the 
laborer  in  another  way  than  through  their  actual  effects 
on  his  body :  they  absorb  money  that  he  needs  for  nour- 
ishing food  for  himself  and  his  family,  and  so  he  is  still 
further  enfeebled  by  his  indulgence.  Yet  it  is  easy  to 
comprehend  the  almost  irresistible  temptation  of  the 
laborer  to  drink.  He  feels  the  need  of  exhilaration,  some- 
thing that  shall  dull  his  sense  of  suffering,  relieve  some  of 
his  fatigue,  slake  the  abnormal  thirst  created  by  some  of 
his  employments.  The  wives  of  working-men  are  often 
unfitted  for  domestic  duties,  wholly  without  training, 
and  do  not  know  how  to  buy  food  to  the  best  advantage 
nor  how  to  prepare  it  so  that  it  shall  be  most  palatable  and 
nourishing.  Bad  cookery  has  not  a  little  to  do  with 
driving  men  and  women  to  drink. 

The  socialist,  the  prohibitionist,  and  the  working-man 


THE  IDEALS   OF   SOCIALISM 


323 


who  is  no  sort  of  ''ist,''  ought  to  join  hands  in  united  and 
determined  effort  to  better  these  conditions.  It  is  usual 
to  object  to  prohibition,  that  a  social  vice  like  drunken- 
ness cannot  be  cured  by  law ;  but  it  is  a  convincing  reply 
that  such  a  vice  cannot  be  cured  without  law.  True,  men 
must  be  cured  of  the  drink  habit,  the  drink  appetite,  and 
that  is  a  moral  process,  sometimes  a  therapeutic ;  but 
this  cure  can  never  be  effected,  in  multitudes  of  cases, 
while  a  saloon  on  every  corner  continually  appeals  to  the 
drinker's  appetite.  Existing  laws  are  as  sensible  as  it 
would  be  to  set  food  before  a  starving  man,  at  the  same 
time  saying  to  him,  "  If  you  eat  that,  you  must  pay  a  fine 
or  go  to  jail."  At  the  present  time,  the  labor  unions  are 
in  advance  of  the  socialists  in  opposing  the  saloon.  The 
constitution  of  the  United  Mine  Workers  forbids  any 
member  to  sell  any  intoxicants,  even  at  a  picnic;  and 
many  of  the  most  honored  leaders  of  working-men  have 
avowed  themselves  uncompromising  enemies  of  the  sa- 
loon and  of  drink.^ 

1  Some  official  utterances  by  working-men's  leaders:  "Nothing  has 
done  more  to  bring  misery  upon  innocent  women  and  children  than  the 
money  spent  for  drink.  The  laboring  man  has  no  money  to  spend  on 
drink  without  robbing  his  family.  I  believe  as  the  labor  movement  grows, 
so  will  the  temperance  movement  grow."  —  John  Mitchell,  ex-president 
of  the  United  Mine  Workers.  "Because  the  liquor  traffic  tends  to  en- 
slave the  people,  to  make  them  satisfied  with  improper  conditions,  and 
keep  them  ignorant,  the  leaders  of  the  trade-union  movement  are  called 
upon  to  fight  the  saloon." — Thomas  L.  Lewis,  president  of  the  United 
Mine  Workers.  "Who  can  deny  that  the  liquor  traffic  is  driving  women 
to  work  in  factories,  in  workshops,  and  at  washtubs,  who  ought  not  to  be 
there  ?  The  liquor  traffic  tends  to  reduce  wages ;  never  to  increase  them. 
The  use  of  alcohol  makes  men  less  skilful,  and  drives  them  to  lower  scales 
of  employment  and  reward.  Every  cent  sjicnt  in  the  iicjuor  business  is 
wasted,  bringing  no  social  benefit  or  moral  ujilift."  —  John  B.  Lemon, 
treasurer,  at  the  last  convention  of  the  Federation  of  Lalwr,  in  Toronto. 


324  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

XI 

An  objection  of  the  commonest  against  Socialism,  and 
some  esteem  it  the  most  serious  of  all,  is  that  it  would  be 
destructive  of  the  family.  It  is  true  that  some  socialists, 
regarding  the  family  as  the  product  of  Capitalism  and 
priestcraft,  have  declared  for  its  abolition.  Other  so- 
cialists hold  very  different  views.  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  says 
that  Socialism,  so  far  from  destroying  the  family,  "would 
make  it,  for  the  first  time,  so  far  as  a  very  large  moiety  of 
our  population  is  concerned,  a  possible  and  efficient 
thing."  ^  With  this  Kautsky  agrees,  though  he  adds, "  We 
expect  that  a  new  form  of  society  will  also  develop  a  new 
family  organization."  It  is  vain  to  object  that  Socialism 
will  destroy  the  home,  when  it  is  a  fact  that  Capitalism 
has  destroyed  the  home  for  millions,  by  reducing  the  labor- 
ing class  to  a  degree  of  poverty  that  compels  mothers  to 
work  in  factories,  and  leave  their  families  uncared  for  — 
that  compels  children  of  a  tender  age  to  work  or  starve. 
Destroy  the  home,  forsooth  !  As  if  Socialism  could  pos- 
sibly be  a  greater  menace  to  the  home  than  Capitalism 
now  is.  Nothing  worthy  of  being  called  a  home  is  pos- 
sible to  many  millions  of  Americans  under  the  industrial 
conditions  of  to-day.  Not  to  mention  that  other  enemy 
of  the  home,  that  the  family  can  now  never  know  security, 
being  always  haunted  by  the  spectre  of  want.  Greater 
than  the  actual  misery  of  the  worker's  lot  is  this  continual 
dark  shadow  of  uncertainty  that  hangs  over  him  and  his 
—  the  possibility  that  he  may  lose  his  job  to-morrow,  that 
his  union  may  declare  a  strike,  or  his  employers  decide 
on  a  lockout  or  on  shutting  down  the  works  for  an  indefi- 

1  "New  Worlds  for  Old,"  p.  131. 


THE   IDEALS   OF  SOCIALISM  325 

nite  period,  the  prospect  of  sickness,  injury,  or  disablement, 
and  the  certainty  of  old  age  and  rejection  everywhere. 
Lasting  happiness  is  impossible  with  the  wolf  forever 
lurking  just  outside  the  door.  It  is  difficult  for  virtue, 
impossible  for  contentment,  to  flourish  in  such  an  atmos- 
phere. 

In  view  of  this  often-urged  antagonism  of  Socialism 
to  the  family,  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  no  current  reforms 
engage  the  sympathy  and  practical  cooperation  of  social- 
ists more  quickly  and  heartily  than  those  that  concern 
the  problems  of  the  home,  especially  the  protection  of 
women  and  children.  One  of  the  finest  and  most  valued 
institutions  in  Germany  is  the  forest  home,  near  Berlin. 
Delicate  children  in  the  schools  are  sent,  on  the  advice  of 
Dhysicians,  to  this  out-of-doors  school,  and  in  a  year  or 
two  most  of  them  return,  none  the  worse  in  their  studies 
and  greatly  improved  in  health.  The  importance  to 
the  coming  generation  of  such  intelligent  effort  as  this 
appeals  strongly  to  socialists.  The  "fresh  air"  work  in 
our  cities  meets  with  equally  warm  approval ;  only, 
socialists  do  not  fail  to  urge  that  there  is  something  better 
than  such  attempt  to  remedy  the  e\'ils  of  the  slums,  and 
that  is  to  do  away  with  the  slums,  to  secure  fresh  air,  pure 
water,  and  clean  surroundings  for  all.  So  socialists  ap- 
prove the  attempt  to  prohibit  child  labor,  but  they  also 
urge  that  it  is  comparatively  useless  merely  to  prevent 
the  children  from  working  and  do  nothing  to  uplift  the 
families  from  which  they  come,  for  that  is  the  wanton 
cruelty  of  condemning  children  to  starvation  and  naked- 
ness. Child  labor  is  the  direct  product  of  social  misery. 
Reforms  cannot  go  single-handed,  because  social  evils 
are  interrelated  in  a  complex  system.     Still,  one  must 


326  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

begin  somewhere;  we  must  strike  at  the  nearest  head 
of  the  hydra,  and  keep  on  striking,  until  the  last  one 
is  killed. 

It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  give  serious  consideration 
to  the  ideal  community  of  the  future,  as  some  sociahsts 
have  imagined  it,  so  far  as  the  treatment  of  children  is 
concerned.  That  ideal  might  not  be  unfairly  described 
as  a  great  system  of  foundhng  hospitals,  or  Spartan  bar- 
racks, in  which  all  children  shall  be  separated  from  their 
parents  at  a  tender  age  and  reared  together  under  an 
ironclad  system.  If  this  seems  to  any  people  an  im- 
provement on  the  present  order  —  even  with  plenty  to 
eat  and  drink  and  wear  guaranteed,  and  experienced 
nurses  and  teachers  employed  —  one  must  infer  that  the 
present  lot  of  the  workers  is  fuller  of  inisery  than  had  been 
imagined,  and  that  the  present  methods  of  rearing  chil- 
dren are  more  ineffective  than  the  sharpest  critics  have 
dared  to  charge ;  and  also  that  parental  love  has  declined 
to  a  degree  that  it  shocks  one  to  think  about. 

It  is  rational  to  expect  a  general  uplift  of  the  family 
through  the  effect  that  Socialism  is  likely  to  have  on  the 
status  and  character  of  women.  The  ideal  of  SociaHsm 
is  the  perfect  equahty  of  the  sexes,  but  not  the  equahty 
contemplated  by  existing  laws.  Legislation  has  thus  far 
had  as  its  principal  aim  the  insuring  of  fair  and  free  com- 
petition. Laws  have  been  and  still  are  like  the  rules  of 
the  prize  ring  or  a  Marathon  race,  merely  an  effort  to 
secure  a  fair  contest,  and  their  spirit  may  be  summed  up 
in  the  phrase,  "May  the  best  man  win."  And  it  must 
be  acknowledged  that,  under  this  free  competition,  the 
"best  man"  not  infrequently  turns  out  to  be  a  woman. 
But  while  contests  doubtless  have  their  place  in  life,  all 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  327 

life  should  not  be  a  contest ;  and  above  all,  it  should  not 
be  a  contest  between  men  and  women.  A  man  may  be 
compelled  sometimes  to  fight,  but  there  is  something 
repulsive  to  healthy  mxanhood  in  requiring,  or  even  per- 
mitting, women  to  fight.  It  is  because  the  present  order 
of  society  makes  life  one  long  fight  with  one's  fellows,  in 
which  the  v/eakest  go  under,  that  the  present  order  is 
radically  and  hopelessly  wrong.  In  promising  to  make 
Kfe  a  struggle  for  one's  fellows,  not  with  and  against  them, 
SociaHsm  holds  out  a  bright  prospect  of  upHft  for  the 
whole  race,  and  for  woman  especially. 

By  giving  woman  economic  equality  with  man,  So- 
cialism would  insure  her  equality  in  all  things.  But 
equality  of  right  and  opportunity  does  not  mean  identity 
of  function.  Nature  has  imposed  on  the  race  two  im- 
perative duties :  to  preserve  life  and  to  reproduce  it. 
These  may  be  called  the  primary  duties  of  mankind.  The 
chief  burden  of  the  preservation  of  life  falls  on  man ;  the 
chief  burden  of  the  reproduction  of  life  falls  on  woman. 
All  those  activities  connected  with  the  production  and 
exchange  of  useful  commodities,  which  we  call  "indus- 
try" and  "business,"  are  the  special  province  of  man, 
and  the  performance  of  his  duties  commands  a  return  in 
money  or  money's  worth.  But  there  is  no  market  price 
for  maternity ;  a  mother's  fulfilment  of  duty  can  be  paid 
only  in  love,  in  respect,  in  service.  The  relative  incidence 
of  these  duties  can  never  be  altered ;  the  future  man,  if 
there  is  to  be  a  future  man,  must  have  a  mother.  And 
this  means,  inevitably,  that  women  as  a  class  can  no  more 
become  the  economic  equals  of  man,  in  the  sense  of  pro- 
ducing as  much  wealth  as  he,  than  a  quart  of  milk  can  be- 
made  into  a  gallon. 


328  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

No  doubt,  as  Professor  Densmore  argues/  more  hy- 
gienic training  and  outdoor  life  will  make  woman  more 
nearly  man's  physical  equal,  without  diminishing  her 
charm  ;  still,  her  sex  function  will  prohibit  her  from  equal 
competition  or  equal  performance  with  man  as  a  producer 
of  wealth.  But  if  nature  has  given  to  man  superior 
strength,  she  has  bestowed  on  woman  the  finer  moral 
fibre  and  the  higher  spiritual  endowment,  — 

Her  'prentice  hand  she  tried  on  man 
And  then  she  made  the  lassie,  O. 

These  gifts  it  is  her  privilege  to  use  for  her  own  genera- 
tion, and  her  duty  to  transmit  to  posterity.  This  ful- 
filment of  her  function  of  maternity  necessarily  takes 
from  the  life  of  every  woman  who  is  a  mother  a  large 
stock  of  her  physical  energy  and  a  considerable  portion  of 
her  labor-time.  No  other  state  of  things  is  possible,  or 
will  ever  be  possible,  if  the  race  is  to  continue.  There- 
fore woman  can  never  equal  man  as  a  producer  of  wealth, 
but  she  is  his  equal  in  every  respect  in  social  function. 
Neither  sex  can  be  pronounced  more  indispensable  to 
society  than  the  other,  both  are  equally  necessary,  and, 
therefore,  both  should  receive  equal  social  recognition. 
That  is  to  say,  both  should  receive  an  equal  share  of  the 
results  of  their  common  labors. 

The  recognition  of  this  perfect  social  equality,  so  far 
from  threatening  the  permanence  of  the  family,  ought 
to  increase  it.  Such  condition  will  promote  reasonably 
early  marriages.  Youth  is  the  natural  time  for  mating, 
but  under  present  conditions  only  the  imprudent  poor 

*  "Sex  Equality,"  New  York,  1907,  esp.  Chap.  HI. 


THE   roEALS  OF  SOCLALISM  329 

and  the  rich  who  do  not  need  to  be  prudent  venture  to 
marry  early.  The  average  man  must  establish  himself 
in  some  business  or  profession  or  trade,  so  that  he  can  be 
reasonably  certain  of  a  good  income,  according  to  his 
social  standards,  and  so  be  confident  of  his  ability  to 
support  a  family.  When  men  and  women  are  economic 
equals,  and  both  are  assured  of  a  competence,  earher 
marriages  may  be  expected,  and  offspring  physically  and 
spiritually  superior  to  those  of  present-day  unions,  often 
concluded  late  and  between  persons  who  never  should 
have  been  mated. 

The  socialist  protests  against  a  social  order  that  vir- 
tually compels  every  woman  to  attach  herself  to  a  "bread- 
winner," with  or  without  legal  sanctions,  or  suffer  heavy 
social  penalty  and  perhaps  actual  want.  Women  cannot 
have  the  dignity  that  belongs  to  their  sex  function  until 
they  are  given  independence,  economic  and  ethical,  as 
well  as  legal.  Are  those  marriages  exceptionally  un- 
happy now,  or  exceptionally  likely  to  end  in  divorce,  in 
which  both  parties  are  financially  independent?  If  the 
wife  has  property  and  income  of  her  own,  does  she  love 
her  husband  less,  or  is  she  less  devoted  to  her  children, 
than  the  woman  who  must  ask  her  husband  for  a  nickel 
every  time  she  wishes  to  take  a  trolley  car  ?  May  we 
not  fairly  expect  more  marriages  for  genuine  love,  when, 
on  the  one  hand,  men  are  no  longer  tempted  to  be  for- 
tune-hunters, and  no  woman  is  compelled  to  marry  for 
a  home  ? 

Those  who  first  called  prostitution  "the  social  evil" 
spoke  more  wisely  than  they  knew,  for,  seeking  only  a 
euphonious  name,  they  hit  upon  an  accurately  descrip- 
tive epithet.     It  is  almost  wholly  a  social  evil,  due  to  the 


330  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

economic  dependence  of  women  upon  men,  and  may  be 
expected  to  disappear  entirely  under  Socialism.  Com- 
paratively few  women  choose  this  life  of  vice  because  they 
are  inherently  vicious ;  it  is  for  them  a  means  of  liveli- 
hood, often  the  only  possible  means.  Rescue  work  makes 
no  visible  impression  on  this  great  social  ulcer,  because 
we  are  only  fooling  with  the  symptoms,  providing  sooth- 
ing plasters,  and  lack  courage  to  go  to  the  root  of  this 
disorder.  No  doubt  sexual  immorality  will  continue, 
to  some  extent,  under  Socialism ;  but  the  great  majority 
of  m.en  and  women  may  reasonably  be  expected  to  love 
purely  and  to  live  unselfishly  for  the  welfare  of  those 
whom  they  love,  when  they  are  on  an  absolute  social  and 
economic  equality.  The  coming  of  children  will  bind  a 
married  pair  still  more  closely  together,  in  future  as  in 
the  past,  for  neither  Socialism  nor  anything  else  will 
materially  change  human  nature.  The  love  of  parents 
for  their  children  will  be  no  less  in  a  new  society  than  it 
has  been  in  the  old.  And  while  love  endures,  the  family 
cannot  fail ;  when  love  fails,  the  family  cannot  endure. 

It  is  recognition  of  this  principle  that  has  led  many 
socialists  to  favor  the  dissolution  of  the  marriage  bond, 
as  soon  as  affection  has  ceased  to  bind  husband  and  wife 
together.  But  this  is  not  a  view  peculiar  to  sociahsts. 
In  the  divorce  colony  at  Reno  will  be  found  many  of  the 
capitalist  class,  but  few  socialists.  It  is  equally  true  that 
some  socialists  have  advocated  what  is  commonly  known 
as  "free  love"  for  marriage,  a  more  or  less  refined  het- 
aerism,  or  even  promiscuity  of  the  sexes.  But  these  are 
mere  vagaries  of  individuals  or  groups,  that  have  no 
special  affinity  for  the  real  principles  of  Socialism,  since 
such  individuals  and  groups  are  at  least  equally  numer- 


THE  roEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  331 

ous  among  those  who  are  not  socialists.  Many  oppo- 
nents have  been  conspicuously  unfair,  to  the  verge  of 
deliberate  dishonesty,  in  attempting  to  fasten  upon 
Sociahsm  a  theory  of  marriage  that  is  no  essential  part 
of  the  svstem. 


of  the  system 


XII 


What  effect  would  Socialism  have  on  "society"  in  the 
narrower  sense,  on  the  association  of  men  and  women  for 
mutual  pleasure  ?  It  would  probably  have  no  direct 
effect,  and  would  seek  to  have  none.  Social  intercourse 
would  continue  to  be  arranged,  as  now,  on  voluntary 
principles.  Indirectly,  however,  Socialism  might  have 
an  effect,  and,  so  far  as  one  can  forecast,  entirely  for  good. 
It  would  do  away  forever  with  those  artificial  distinctions 
that  rest  on  wealth,  and  social  intercourse  would  arrange 
itself  on  the  basis  of  mutual  affinities  of  character,  tastes, 
and  pursuits. 

The  destructive  effects  of  Socialism  on  our  present 
social  customs  are  more  easily  predicted  than  the  new 
combinations  that  would  be  effected.  The  chief  ex- 
penditure of  those  who  now  have  means  above  their 
wants  is  less  on  pleasure  or  luxury  than  on  display. 
These  are  sometimes  hard  to  distinguish,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted, but  are  usually  separable.  Men  buy  automo- 
biles and  yachts,  partly,  of  course,  because  they  like 
sports,  but  still  more  because  engaging  in  these  particular 
sports  marks  them  out  as  men  of  wealth  and  a  certain 
leisure,  and  so  constitutes  a  claim  to  social  eminence. 
Women  flaunt  silks  and  velvets,  diamonds  and  pearls, 
partly  because  these  arc  beautiful  objects  and  arc  sup- 
posed to  enhance  the  beauty  of  the  wearers,  but  still  more 


332  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

because  their  possession  is  in  itself  a  certificate  of  wealth 
and  a  title  to  social  distinction.  We  all  buy  things  more 
to  impress  Mrs.  Grundy  than  to  please  ourselves.  Has 
our  neighbor  a  new  parlor  organ?  We  must  at  once 
have  a  piano,  and  thereby  show  our  social  superiority, 
even  if  no  member  of  the  family  can  play  the  new  in- 
strument. If  Mrs.  Smith  has  a  new  silk  dress,  Mrs. 
Jones  across  the  street  goes  her  one  better  with  a  sealskin 
coat.  And  so  forth  and  so  on,  to  the  end  of  the  social 
chapter. 

Socialism  would  do  away  with  the  greater  part  of  dis- 
play, if  not  with  all,  by  depriving  people  at  once  of  the 
motive  and  the  means.  If  men  are  conscious  of  economic 
equality,  each  will  have  the  courage  to  be  himself,  to  live 
his  life  in  his  own  way,  and  the  temptation  to  imitate  or 
surpass  his  neighbor  will  be  eliminated.  Even  if  the  dis- 
position for  display  should  remain,  which  is  possible, 
the  ability  would  be  lacking.  No  one  in  a  socialized 
community  could  greatly  surpass  his  neighbor  in  the 
mere  externals  of  living ;  if  he  wishes  to  surpass,  he  must 
surpass  in  real  worth,  in  character,  in  attainments.  And 
the  higher  forms  of  character,  the  best  attainments,  are 
rarely  or  never  bred  by  the  desire  to  surpass ;  they  come 
through  sincere  love  of  the  thing  sought.  It  seems  a 
reasonable  forecast,  therefore,  that  the  ethical  tone  of  so- 
ciety would  be  higher  under  the  new  order  than  it  now 
is,  and  that  there  would  be  more  real  happiness,  with  less 
envy  and  jealousy  —  all,  certainly,  things  most  devoutly 
to  be  wished. 

Social  ostracism  will  probably  be  more  effective  than 
law  in  a  new  social  order,  for  the  repression  of  offences 
with  which  it  may  be  inexpedient  for  the  law  to  deal. 


THE  IDEALS  OF  SOCIALISM  333 

Even  now  this  is  sometimes  the  case.  A  woman  known, 
or  even  suspected,  to  have  lapsed  from  sexual  virtue  loses 
her  social  standing  at  once  and  can  scarcely  ever  recover 
it  again  —  even  to  be  proved  innocent  does  not  always 
avail.  A  man  caught  cheating  at  cards  will  be  expelled 
from  his  club  and  sent  to  Coventry  by  men  who  are  not 
at  all  particular  about  most  forms  of  moral  transgression. 
This  is  a  means  of  social  discipline  obviously  capable  of 
indefinite  extension,  if  people  choose  to  extend  it.  If 
society  strongly  disapproves  a  certain  line  of  conduct,  the 
remedy  is  in  its  own  hands  and  can  be  applied  without 
legislation  at  any  time.  Fines  and  imprisonments,  and 
even  death  itself,  are  penalties  no  more  feared  than  social 
disgrace. 


DC 


THE  SOCL\L  TEACmXGS  OF  JESUS  —  GENERAL 

PRTNXIPLES 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

General  works :  — 
Beyschlag,  New  Testament  Theology,  2  vols.    Edinburgh,  1895. 
Wendt,  The  Teaching  of  Jesus,  2  vols.     New  York,  1892. 
Briggs,  The  Ethical  Teaching  of  Jesus.     New  York,  1904. 
Gilbert,  The  Revelation  of  Jesus,    New  York,  1889. 

The  Social  Teaching  of  Jesus :  — 
Ecce  Homo.     Boston,  1896. 

Candlish,  The  Kingdom  of  God.     Edinburgh,  1864, 
BoARDMAN,  The  Kingdom.     New  York,  1899. 
Mathews,  The  Social  Teaching  of  Jesus.     New  York,  1899. 
Peabody,  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question.     New  York,  1904. 
Jenks,  The  Social  Significance  of  the  Teaching  of  Jesus.     New 

York,  1908. 
Westcott,  Social  Aspects  of  Christianity.     London,  1887. 


IX 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  —  GENERAL  PRINCIPLES 

Nothing  is  more  encouraging  in  theological  studies 
than  the  general  recognition  of  the  fundamental  im- 
portance of  candid,  reverent,  inductive  study  of  the 
teachings  of  Jesus.  That  such  study  should  have  been 
postponed  until  our  generation  is  the  marvel  of  marvels. 
One  would  have  reasoned  that  the  paramount  desire  of 
Christians  in  all  ages  would  have  been  to  learn  what  was 
taught  by  him  whom  they  professed  to  accept  as  Master 
and  Lord.  Much  of  value  has  already  been  accomplished 
in  this  study,  but  much  remains  to  be  done.  It  is  so 
difficult  a  task  to  put  away  from  the  mind  previous 
theological  bias,  and  permit  the  words  of  Jesus  to  make 
their  own  impression,  that  the  work  cannot  be  accom- 
plished in  a  single  generation.  Much  critical  study  of  the 
sources  was  necessary,  and  is  still  to  be  completed,  before 
we  can  be  assured  that  what  purport  to  be  the  words  of 
Jesus  are  really  his  words. 

But  any  fruitful  study  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus  must 
be  truly  critical,  not  pseudo-critical.  No  arbitrary  rules 
can  be  suffered  to  decide  whether  a  given  saying  is  to 
be  recognized  as  genuine,  or  should  be  excluded  as  a  late 
tradition.  Historical  critics  arc  prone  to  forget  that 
what  they  call  documentary  evidence  is  only  one  of  the 
criteria  of  truth.  A  method  that  rejects  the  parables  of 
z  337 


338         SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

the  tares,  the  leaven,  and  the  pearl  of  great  price,  because 
they  are  found  only  in  Matthew,  or  will  not  receive  as 
the  words  of  Jesus  the  parables  of  the  Good  Samaritan 
and  the  Prodigal  Son,  because  they  are  found  only  in 
Luke,  certainly  leaves  something  to  be  desired  in  ethical 
insight  and  critical  authoritativeness.  Many  of  the 
sayings  attributed  to  Jesus  in  the  gospels  are  so  self- 
evidencing  to  men  of  acute  moral  sensibility  that  external 
evidence  is  dispensable.  Even  a  critic  like  Schmiedel 
comes  near  recognizing  this :  *' We  may  accept  as  credible 
everything  that  harmonizes  with  the  idea  of  Jesus  which 
has  been  derived  from  what  we  have  called  the  founda- 
tion pillars,  and  is  not  otherwise  open  to  fatal  objection." 
Many  offences  have  been  committed  in  the  name  of  criti- 
cism, but  perhaps  none  have  been  more  flagrant  than  the 
rejection,  for  lack  of  fuller  external  attestation,  of  words 
that  nobody  could  have  spoken  but  the  Teacher  of  Gali- 
lee. His  ethical  sayings  are  of  so  unique  character  that 
they  cannot  be  supposed  to  have  been  either  imitated  or 
radically  altered  —  they  burned  themselves  into  the  mem- 
ories of  those  who  heard.  We  may  allow  something 
for  traditional  or  editorial  modification  of  form,  but  most 
of  the  words  of  Jesus  given  us  in  the  synoptic  gospels  can- 
not be  invalidated  by  any  rational  criticism.  In  a  dis- 
cussion hke  the  present,  results  must  be  given,  not  pro- 
cesses ;  but  we  must  certainly  have  a  wider  basis  for  our 
discussion  than  the  nine  "foundation pillars"  of  Schmiedel 
or  the  "doubly  attested  sayings"  of  Burkitt.^ 

Careful  inductive  study  of  the  ethical  elements  in  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  is  the  more  necessary,  because  it  is 

1  Schmiedel,  "Jesus  in  Modern  Criticism,"  London,  1907.     Burkitt, 
"The  Gospel  History  and  its  Transmission,"  Edinburgh,  1907. 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  339 

notorious  that  even  his  professed  disciples  do  not  accept 
his  ethics  as  actual  standards  of  character  and  conduct. 
The  Christian  world  has  long  been  agreed  that  these 
ethics  are  to  be  interpreted  as  counsels  of  perfection,  as 
ideals  beautiful  indeed,  but  forever  unattainable.  That 
they  are  basic  principles  for  the  direction  of  life  and  con- 
duct, few  Christians  believe  and  still  fewer  practice.  The 
Jesus  of  the  gospels  found  his  most  formidable  opponent 
in  the  Judaism  of  his  day ;  his  chief  present  obstacle  is 
the  Christianity  of  our  day.  We  have  to  free  ourselves, 
therefore,  from  this  unrecognized  attitude  of  hostility 
to  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  before  there  is  any  reasonable 
prospect  of  our  comprehending  them. 

An  immense  work  must  be  done,  as  indispensable  pre- 
liminary to  successful  study  of  the  ethics  of  Jesus,  in 
discharging  our  minds  of  prejudices  and  inherited  ideas. 
Centuries  of  dogmatic  instruction  have  so  warped  the 
mental  operations  and  colored  the  imaginations  of  men 
that  it  is  almost  impossible  to  see  Jesus  in  the  dry,  white 
light  of  truth.  The  very  historic  facts  are  so  incrusted 
with  tradition  that  they  are  hard  to  come  at,  and  so  un- 
famihar  in  form  that  they  are  even  harder  to  comprehend. 
Comprehension  is  an  effect  of  sympathetic  imagination, 
and  is  impossible  so  long  as  we  insist  on  subjecting  the 
Oriental  mind  to  the  psychological  processes  of  the  West. 
Jesus  was  not  a  Western  academic  lecturer,  but  an  Orien- 
tal popular  teacher.  We  must  expect  to  find  him  speak- 
ing in  the  sententious,  enigmatic  manner  of  other  Orien- 
tal teachers.  He  does  not  pursue  the  scientific  method 
but  the  literary.^     He  utters  pregnant  sayings,  not  pre- 

'  As  to  literary  form,  much  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  is  in  that  rhythmic 
style  of   the  Proverbs  and  other  Wisdom  literature,  generally  termed 


340  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

cise  definitions.  He  speaks  in  bold  metaphor,  in  start- 
ling paradox.  The  West  dotes  on  abstract  ethics ;  Jesus 
gave  men  concrete  ethics.  We  should  be  prepared,  there- 
fore, to  find  many  of  his  sayings  relatively  true,  not 
exactly  true.  And  yet  we  must  not  rush  to  the  opposite 
extreme,  and  regard  the  teachings  of  Jesus  as  a  series 
of  cryptic  utterances,  whose  meaning  is  to  be  laboriously 
puzzled  out.  They  are  brief,  epigrammatic,  often  highly 
figurative,  illuminative,  stimulating ;  "  my  words,"  he  said, 
"are  spirit  and  life."  To  interpret  his  paradoxes  and 
metaphors  as  if  they  were  rigid  scientific  definitions  or 
precise  rules  of  conduct,  is  to  fall  into  that  very  rigor  of 
legalism  that  he  reprobated  in  the  Pharisees,  in  the  strong- 
est invective  that  ever  fell  from  the  lips  of  religious 
teacher. 

More  than  grammatical  exegesis  is  required  to  under- 
stand ethical  precepts  of  this  order,  and  to  understand 
them  as  grammarians  will  often  be  to  miss  their  meaning 
altogether.  Nothing  could  be  a  more  wrong-headed  prin- 
ciple of  interpretation  than  this  suggested  by  an  eminent 
New  Testament  critic :  "The  only  legitimate  exegesis  of 
the  passages  is  one  that  assigns  to  them  their  obvious  lit- 
eral meaning.  Nothing  else  could  have  been  intended. 
In  no  other  sense  could  they  have  been  understood  by 
the  original  hearers  or  readers."^  But  the  gospels  make 
it  plain  that  the  hearers  of  Jesus  often  misunderstood 

"Parallelism" — -the  only  poetry  known  to  the  Hebrews.  It  will  as- 
tonish some  to  be  told  that  Jesus  was  poet  as  well  as  prophet,  but  such 
he  was,  if  we  have  his  words  as  he  spoke  them,  though  all  translators  and 
editors  have  done  their  best  —  or  worst  —  to  conceal  this  fact  from  the 
English  reader.  ' 

1  Orello  Cone,  "  Rich  and  Poor  in  the  New  Testament,"  p.  214.  New 
York,  1902. 


THE   SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  341 

him,  because  they  insisted  on  this  principle  of  interpreta- 
tion. Nowhere  are  sympathetic  insight  and  sound  judg- 
ment more  necessary  than  in  studying  the  words  of  Jesus. 
He  himself  often  intimated  as  much:  "He  that  hath 
ears  to  hear,  let  him  hear." 

Jesus  taught  ethics,  not  an  ethic.  He  did  not  aim  at 
clothing  his  precepts  with  scientific  form,  or  giving  them 
schematic  completeness.  He  speaks  a  truth  here,  he 
tells  a  parable  there,  flashes  of  ethical  light  into  the  dark- 
ness of  men's  souls,  rather  than  careful  reasonings.  We 
look  to  him  for  ideals  and  inspiration,  not  for  systematic 
instruction.  Yet  though  unsystematic,  his  teachings 
are  not  a  haphazard  collection  of  miscellaneous  unrelated 
sayings ;  there  is  an  organizing  principle  to  be  found  in 
them,  without  long  search  or  undue  ingenuity.  The 
followers  of  Jesus  are  under  no  obligation  to  do  what  their 
Master  deliberately  declined  to  do  —  construct  a  com- 
plete ethical  system  out  of  his  detached  sayings  —  but 
his  teaching  will  be  better  understood  by  us  if  we  see  that 
there  was  an  order  in  his  ideas,  and  that  his  chief  sayings 
stood  in  a  sound  logical  relation  to  one  another.  For, 
though  a  concrete  thinker,  Jesus  was  not  a  loose  thinker, 
and  he  was  not  content  with  the  Emersonian  rule  of 
speaking  what  is  true  to  the  mood  of  the  moment,  trust- 
ing his  sa>ings  somehow  to  harmonize  with  each  other, 
and  despising  consistency  as  the  infirmity  of  small  minds. 

One  other  preliminary  word  should  be  said.  Religion 
has  to  do  with  man's  relation  to  God ;  ethics  with  man's 
relations  to  his  fellows.  Jesus  was  a  teacher,  not  of 
ethics  alone,  but  of  religion  —  his  ethics  were  grounded 
in  his  religion,  were  the  necessary  consequence  of  his  re- 
ligion.    In  the  mind  of  Jesus  the  two  appear  to  have  been 


342  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

inseparable  and  the  follower  of  Jesus  can  never  consent 
to  their  separation.  The  one  thing  that  was  never  absent 
from  the  thought  of  Jesus  was  his  consciousness  of  God ; 
and  the  one  thing  that  cannot  be  eliminated  from  his 
teaching  is  the  sentiments  of  dependence,  of  duty,  of 
gratitude,  of  devotion  toward  that  Soul  of  things  known 
to  us  as  the  perfection  of  unity,  power,  wisdom,  love,  and 
law.  But  while  the  impossibility  of  an  examination  of 
the  ethical  teachings  of  Jesus,  in  which  his  religion  shall 
have  no  part,  ought  to  be  apparent  to  any  one  who  is  at 
all  familiar  with  his  words,  it  is  possible  to  give  our  main 
attention  to  the  ethics. 


In  making  an  inductive  study  of  the  social  teaching 
of  Jesus,  it  is  of  the  first  importance  to  get  his  own  point 
of  view.  How  did  he  conceive  of  his  mission  ?  What  did 
he  believe  that  he  had  come  into  the  world  to  accomplish  ? 

If  we  approach  the  gospels  with  this  question,  we  shall 
have  little  difficulty  in  finding  an  answer,  for  Jesus  and 
the  evangelists  leave  no  room  for  doubt  on  this  point.  It 
becomes  clear  at  once  to  one  who  studies  his  words  that 
the  social  teaching  of  Jesus  was  no  by-product,  that  his 
ethical  precepts  were  no  fortuitous  obiter  dicta,  but  that 
this  was  rather  the  essence,  the  burden  of  his  message  to 
men.  He  came  to  proclaim  the  Good  News ;  of  that  we 
are  so  often  assured  as  to  leave  no  possibihty  of  doubt  that 
this  was  the  way  in  which  Jesus  himself  conceived  of  his 
mission.  His  message  is  still  further  described  as  'Hhe 
Good  News  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,"  or  "the  kingdom  of 
Heaven."  The  proclamation  of  Jesus  was  Good  News 
to  men,  because  it  was  the  announcement  that  the  great 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  343 

hope  of  the  nation  was  on  the  verge  of  fulfilment :  the 
kingdom  of  God  was  at  hand. 

The  mission  of  Jesus  is  also  described  as  "salvation "  — 
he  proclaimed  a  divine  deliverance  of  both  individuals  and 
society,  through  the  establishment  of  a  new  society,  the 
kingdom  of  God.  It  was  for  this  work  that  he  was  the 
Anointed  of  God.  There  was  evidently  in  his  mind  no 
thought  of  a  national  restoration,  a  great  pohtical  renais- 
sance of  Judaism,  such  as  the  Jew  of  his  day  ardently 
desired.  For  to  the  Jew,  the  kingdom  of  God  had  come 
to  mean  a  revival  of  the  monarchy  by  a  son  of  the  House 
of  David.  The  kingdom  indeed  connoted  the  ideas  of  a 
commonwealth  of  righteousness,  peace,  and  plenty,  but 
only  as  a  result  of  the  triumph  and  worldwide  rule  of 
Israel.  The  Messiah  was  to  supplant  the  emperor  as 
sovereign  of  the  world,  and  sway  the  sceptre  of  the  na- 
tions from  Jerusalem,  and  the  foot  of  the  Jew  would  be 
on  the  neck  of  the  Roman.  The  current  Jewish  idea 
of  the  kingdom  was,  in  a  word,  purely  political  and 
materialistic. 

But  to  Jesus  this  was  nothing.  There  were  many 
zealots  in  Israel,  after  him,  as  well  as  before  him,  but  Jesus 
declined  to  be  a  zealot.  The  kingdom  in  his  eyes  was  one 
in  which  God  should  rule  and  righteousness  prevail  and 
good  triumph,  a  kingdom  in  which  the  poor  in  spirit  shall 
come  to  their  own,  the  meek  shall  inherit  the  earth,  the 
merciful  obtain  mercy,  and  the  peacemakers  be  called 
children  of  God.  The  Jews  expected  a  political  deliver- 
ance, Jesus  proclaimed  a  social.  They  scornfully  re- 
jected a  kingdom  and  a  Messiah  so  differing  from  their 
preconceptions.  And  yet  if  Jesus  could  have  won  the 
Jews  to  acceptance  of  his  spiritual  kingdom  of  God  and  a 


344  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

reorganized  society,  Jerusalem  would  have  been  saved 
and  the  Jewish  race  would  have  been  promoted  to  the 
hegemony  of  the  earth.  They  adhered  to  their  dream 
of  world  conquest  and  world  empire  at  Jerusalem,  and 
their  city  was  lost  and  their  race  scattered. 

The  certainty,  confidence,  and  persistence  with  which 
Jesus  proclaimed  this  idea  of  the  kingdom  is  the  most 
striking  fact  in  his  ministry.  It  is  the  dominant  note  of 
his  teaching ;  it  is  set  forth  as  the  supreme  quest  of  every 
disciple.  And  this,  the  most  comprehensive  term  that 
we  have  for  the  mission  of  Jesus,  marks  his  teaching  as 
fundamentally  a  social  teaching:  for  the  conception  of 
a  kingdom  is  the  conception  of  a  society,  ordered  by  law. 
But  what  kind  of  a  society  ?  What  did  Jesus  mean  by 
the  kingdom  of  God  ?  He  has  told  us  this  plainly  in  the 
prayer  that  he  taught  to  his  disciples :  it  is  a  kingdom 
of  God,  for  in  it  God  is  to  be  more  fully  revealed  to  his 
children  as  their  Father ;  it  is  God's  kingdom,  inasmuch 
as  his  children  are  to  honor  him  more  fully,  because  more 
intelligently,  as  Father ;  it  is  God's  kingdom,  since  in  it 
his  will  is  to  prevail  completely,  as  it  now  prevails  in 
heaven.^ 

The  kingdom  is  the  master-word  of  Jesus,  the  root  idea 
of  all  his  teaching ;  we  shall  seek  in  vain  to  comprehend 
his  ethics,  unless  we  grasp  this  word  and  all  that  it  im- 
plies. We  must  first  of  all  see  this  world  reconstituted, 
as  Jesus  in  imagination  saw  it,  so  as  to  consist  of  a  society 
of  renewed  men,  men  who  have  experienced  the  blessed- 
ness of  a  new  life  —  a  life  imparted  by  God,  and  hence 
lived  in  harmony  with  God ;  a  life  ruled,  guided,  as  God 
himself  is  guided,  by  the  law  of  holy  love.     It  is  a  king- 

1  Matt.  7:21;   18:14;  Luke  12  :  47 ;   22:42;  Mark  3  :  35. 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  345 

dom  impossible  to  the  natural  man,  so  to  enter  it  he  must 
be  born  again  from  above.  And  this  is  an  experience  im- 
possible to  the  proud,  the  self-righteous,  the  self-satis- 
fied, so  that  only  those  who  are  meek  and  teachable  in 
spirit  can  ever  learn  the  secret  of  Jesus  and  obtain  en- 
trance to  his  kingdom.  Men  cannot  compel  the  coming 
of  such  a  kingdom  of  the  spirit,  though  they  can  do  much 
to  hasten  it ;  God  alone  can  set  it  up ;  the  kingdom  and 
the  power  and  the  glory  are  his. 

This  conception  of  the  kingdom,  fundamental  in  the 
teaching  of  Jesus,  marks  his  Good  News  as  a  social  gospel 
in  its  very  essence,  not  in  any  occasional  and  accidental 
way.  From  a  previous  tendency  to  overlook  the  social 
nature  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  the  pendulum  is  now 
swinging  rapidly  to  the  opposite  extreme,  and  the  ten- 
dency is  strong  to  treat  his  teaching  as  wholly  social, 
and  social  in  a  very  literal  and  narrow  sense,  as  concerned 
mainly  with  the  material  welfare  of  men  living  in  social 
relations.  Historical  Christianity  has  without  doubt 
erred  in  its  overemphasis  of  the  individual ;  the  Protes- 
tantism of  the  last  two  centuries  has  gone  to  the  very 
extreme  of  this  assertion  of  the  importance,  the  sacred- 
ness  even,  of  the  individual  soul.  It  is  the  marked 
feature  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  that  he  holds  in  just 
equipoise  the  two  great,  elemental,  equally  necessary 
ethical  truths :  first,  that  society  cannot  be  regenerated 
except  by  the  birth  of  individual  souls  into  a  new  life ; 
and,  second,  that  the  individual  cannot  exist  apart 
from  society  and  cannot  be  saved  apart  from  his  social 
relations. 

The  Good  News  of  Jesus  is  spoken  to  individuals.  The 
purpose  of  its  proclamation  was  first  of  all  to  transform 


346  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

single  lives.  Jesus  made  all  his  appeals  to  the  individual, 
elevated  the  soul  to  new  dignity,  rediscovered  the  worth 
of  personality.  Such  a  message  was  of  the  more  value 
to  his  age,  as  the  tendency  of  Roman  imperiahsm  was  to 
subordinate  the  individual  to  the  State.  Nothing  could 
well  be  more  emphatic  or  impressive  than  this  side  of 
the  teaching  of  Jesus.  The  kingdom  is  the  reign  of  God 
in  the  individual  soul,  the  supremacy  of  his  righteous  will 
acknowledged  and  obeyed,  followed  out  in  all  conduct,  at 
whatever  cost  of  opposition  or  suffering.  A  supernatural 
revolution  of  the  individual  is  the  necessary  condition  to 
a  natural  evolution  of  society.  The  shepherd  went  out 
into  the  wilderness  to  find  the  one  sheep  that  had 
strayed ;  the  woman  swept  her  house  with  lighted  lamp 
to  find  the  single  coin  she  had  lost.  In  all  the  teaching 
of  Jesus,  the  most  resonant  and  thrilling  note  struck 
is  this  worth  of  the  individual  soul.  The  gospel  is,  as 
Harnack  says,  "a  question  of  God  and  the  soul,  the  soul 
and  its  God."  ^ 

But  this  is  only  half  the  content  of  the  gospel.  Men 
are  saved  singly,  soul  by  soul,  just  as  truly  as  men  are 
born  singly  into  the  world  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  every 
regenerate  soul  is  born  into  a  society,  as  truly  as  every 
hum^an  babe.  The  gospel  is  as  fundamentally  social  as  it 
is  individual.  The  two  elements  are  no  more  separable 
in  religion  than  they  are  in  any  other  part  of  human  life. 
Man  is  a  social  animal  on  the  spiritual  side,  as  completely 

^  "What  is  Christianity,"  p.  56.  Christianity  has  no  necessary  affinity 
with  economic  individualism.  In  his  eternal  relations  to  God  and  right- 
eousness, Christianity  teaches  that  each  individual  soul  stands  or  falls 
alone.  In  his  relations  as  a  man,  in  the  actual  affairs  of  life,  Christianity 
insists  that  no  man  lives  to  himself,  that  we  are  all  members  one  of  an- 
other. 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS       347 

as  on  the  physical.  In  transforming  a  human  Hfe,  Jesus 
transforms  all  its  relations.  "On  the  one  hand,"  says 
Dr.  Peabody,  "the  kingdom  is  an  unfolding  process  of 
social  righteousness,  to  be  worked  out  through  indi- 
viduals ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  individual  is  prompted  to 
his  better  hfe  by  the  thought  of  bringing  in  the  king- 
dom." ^  No  better  suggestion,  perhaps,  is  possible  of  the 
practical  reconcihation  of  the  social  and  individual  ele- 
ments in  the  teaching  of  Jesus.  Beginning  in  individual 
hearts,  the  kingdom  is  intended  to  work  outward  hke 
leaven,  until  all  society  is  affected.  Insignificant  as  the 
mustard  seed,  it  shall  become  a  tree.  It  shall  make  the 
disciples  of  Jesus  the  salt  of  the  earth,  the  light  of  the 
world.  The  world  shall  eventually  be  transformed  into 
the  kingdom. 2 

The  ignoring  of  either  of  these  two  principles  will  lead 
to  speculative  error  and  practical  disaster.  The  message 
of  Jesus  loses  its  reality,  if  we  forget  his  estimate  of  the 
infinite  value  of  the  individual  soul ;  the  individual  loses 
his  significance  and  his  very  salvation  becomes  impos- 
sible, unless  we  hold  fast  to  the  idea  of  his  social  relation- 
ships, as  Jesus  taught  them.  The  idea  of  salvation  is  a 
necessary  synthesis  of  individuahsm  and  socialism ;  no 
soul  can  be  saved  but  by  personal,  vital  contact  with  a 
Saviour;  Hfe  can  be  communicated  only  by  contact;  — 

1  "Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question,"  p.  120. 

*  It  is  often  urged  that  the  collectivism  of  Socialism  is  opposed  to  in- 
dividualism, but  a  reconciliation  or  synthesis  may  be  found.  The  con- 
flict between  individual  interests  and  collective  is  no  greater  in  society 
than  in  the  family.  Both  individualism  and  collectivism  find  their  place, 
and  are  easily  reconciled  in  family  life,  provided  only  the  family  is  ruled 
by  the  law  of  love.  Socialism  merely  proposes  to  extend  the  family,  until 
a  nation,  a  race,  become  one  great  family,  with  common  interests,  a  com- 
mon life,  and  a  common  purse. 


348  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

there  is  no  long-distance  gospel.  But  Jesus  did  expect 
society  to  be  regenerated;  he  did  look  to  see  the  king- 
dom of  God  prevail ;  he  came  into  the  world  to  insure  its 
victory  over  the  powers  of  evil.  The  kingdom  was  not  a 
mere  figment  of  the  imagination  to  him,  but  the  royal 
rule  of  God  actually  estabhshed  in  the  earth.  He  looked 
forward  to  a  social  future  of  which  Isaiah's  glowing 
prophecy  was  so  far  from  seeming  exaggeration  that  it 
rather  disclosed  the  poverty  of  language  for  an  adequate 
description. 

The  teaching  of  Jesus  regarding  the  kingdom  struck 
at  every  form  of  privilege.  There  was  no  longer  a  privi- 
lege of  birth  :  men  did  not  become  members  of  the  king- 
dom by  descent  from  Abraham,  but  by  a  transformation 
of  character,  a  new  birth  of  the  spirit.  There  was  no 
privilege  of  wealth  and  social  position:  all  members  of 
the  kingdom  became  brothers,  with  equal  rights  and 
equal  duties.  There  was  no  privilege  of  priesthood : 
every  man  could  go  direct  in  prayer  to  his  Father,  and 
worship  God  in  spirit.  There  was  no  privilege  of  learn- 
ing :  the  Pharisees  who  knew  the  law  were  no  better 
than  the  am-ha-arets  whom  they  despised,  possibly  not 
so  good  as  he.  And  because  this  was  the  teaching  of  Jesus, 
because  he  was  the  great  Leveller,  all  who  were  concerned 
in  the  maintenance  of  privilege  conceived  a  great,  a 
deadly  hostility  to  him.  He  was  the  great  Revolutionary 
of  the  ages,  and  he  knew  it.  "I  am  come  to  cast  fire  on 
the  earth,"  he  said.  Not  peace,  but  a  sword,  was  his 
greatest  gift  to  man,  for  every  great  idea  is  a  sword,  and 
his  was  the  most  militant  idea  ever  made  known  to  men. 
No  more  revolutionary  teaching  could  be  conceived. 
Jesus  clearly  implied  the  reconstitution  of   society  as 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  349 

organized  under  the  Roman  Empire;  and  he  equally 
implied  the  reorganization  of  society  as  it  exists  to-day 
throughout  the  civihzed  world.  Renan  exaggerates  little, 
if  at  all,  when  he  says,  "  A  great  social  revolution,  in 
which  distinctions  of  rank  would  be  dissolved,  in  which  all 
authority  in  the  world  would  be  humiliated,  was  his 
dream."  Such  teachings  as  his  could  no  more  be  made 
compatible  with  any  form  of  society  yet  known  to  man 
than  a  piece  of  unfuUed  cloth  could  be  made  to  agree  with 
an  old  garment.  New  wine  put  into  old  wineskins  would 
no  more  certainly  burst  the  skins  than  this  teaching  of 
Jesus  would  rend  asunder  old  institutions. 

They  miss  the  mark  altogether,  therefore,  who  say 
that  Jesus  was  concerned  solely  with  the  world  of  spirit, 
that  he  endeavored  to  found  an  exclusively  spiritual  com- 
munity. To  accept  his  teachings  was  and  is  impossible, 
without  making  an  attempt  to  carry  them  into  every 
relation  and  detail  of  life.  The  teachings  of  Jesus  are 
spiritual,  no  doubt,  but  their  effect,  just  so  far  as  they 
really  prevail,  is  necessarily  to  reconstitute  the  individual 
spirit  not  onl3^  but  to  reconstitute  the  society  in  which 
Christian  spirits  dwell.  Yet  it  is  true  that  Jesus  had  no 
more  intention  to  furnish  a  programme  of  social  reform 
than  he  had  to  teach  a  system  of  theology.  His  work 
was  to  declare  principles,  to  awaken  consciences,  to  in- 
spire effort,  not  to  work  out  polities  and  constitutions. 
We  need  not  stumble  if  we  find  him  at  times  hard  to  recon- 
cile with  modern  thought.  He  must  speak  to  his  own 
age,  if  he  was  to  speak  to  any  age ;  could  he  have  spoken 
as  a  man  of  the  twentieth  century  to  men  of  the  first, 
he  could  not  have  made  himself  understood,  and  his  life 
would  have  been  lived  in  vain. 


350  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

We  cannot  pass  on  without  brief  consideration  of  an- 
other notion  regarding  Jesus  and  his  teaching  about  the 
kingdom  that  has  lately  won  considerable  acceptance, 
not  to  say  enthusiastic  advocacy,  in  "critical"  circles. 
Bousset,  for  example,  maintains  that  Jesus  conceived  the 
kingdom  as  something  in  the  future  and  wholly  miraculous. 
It  was  to  come  suddenly  and  with  a  great  display  of  power. 
The  apocalyptic  ideas  that  we  find  in  the  discourses  re- 
corded in  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  Mark's  gospel,  and 
in  the  twenty-fourth  and  twenty-fifth  of  Matthew's,  dom- 
inate all  of  the  thinking  and  teaching  of  Jesus.  If  this 
view  is  correct,  and  Jesus  believed  in  an  immediate  and 
catastrophic  consummation  of  the  kingdom,  after  his 
lifetime  yet  near  at  hand,  the  remote  future  is  excluded 
from  the  scope  of  his  ethical  teaching.  In  other  words, 
all  his  teaching  is  of  a  temporary  character,  intended  to 
govern  his  disciples  during  the  brief  time  that  was  to 
elapse  before  the  end  of  the  age  —  interim  ethics,  not 
universal. 

In  this  view  of  the  case,  Jesus  not  only  did  not  teach 
any  absolute  ethics,  valid  for  all  subsequent  ages,  but 
he  had  no  intention  of  doing  such  a  thing.  For  all  that 
we  know,  therefore,  his  sayings  may  have  no  application 
whatever  to  the  conditions  of  the  present  age.  Then,  if 
Jesus  was  only  an  apocalyptist,  and  his  ethics  were  only 
interim  ethics,  what  concern  have  we  with  his  teachings, 
or  what  difference  does  it  make  to  us  what  he  taught? 
If  he  was  so  entirely  and  hopelessly  astray  about  the 
whole  subject  of  the  kingdom  and  its  coming,  as  events 
proved  him  to  be  on  this  hypothesis,  his  opinions  cannot 
matter  to  us  more  than  those  of  any  crack-brained  en- 
thusiast.    Not  merely  the  divinity  of  Christ,  but  any  real 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  351 

significance  or  authority  of  Jesus  as  an  ethical  teacher, 
absolutely  disappears  if  this  theory  is  accepted.  We  had 
better  turn  to  Aristotle,  who  at  least  tried  to  establish 
ethics  on  a  basis  perpetually  true. 

But  when  we  come  to  examine  the  gospels,  it  is  evident 
that  this  theory  cannot  possibly  be  held,  without  a 
ruHng  out  of  one-half  of  the  evidence.  That  the  king- 
dom proclaimed  by  Jesus  was  apocalyptic  and  catas- 
trophic exclusively,  is  a  theory  flatly  contradicted  by 
fully  half  of  the  sayings  attributed  to  him.  If  we  take 
into  consideration  all  the  .e\ddence  as  given  to  us  by  the 
gospels,  we  find  him  describing  the  kingdom  as  both 
present  and  future  —  that  is  to  say,  a  present  possession 
whose  full  consummation  lies  in  the  future,  when  God's 
love  shall  have  completely  conquered  the  evil  in  the 
world  and  restored  men  to  his  likeness.^  "The  kingdom 
of  God  is  at  hand,"  "The  kingdom  of  God  is  within  (or 
among)  you,"  are  sayings  that  cannot  be  fairly  ruled 
out,  and  they  cannot  be  reconciled  with  an  exclusively 
apocaly-ptic  conception  of  the  kingdom.  The  parables 
of  the  sower,  the  seed,  the  tares,  of  the  mustard  seed  and 
the  pounds,  are  not  easily  reconcilable,  to  say  the  least, 
with  the  idea  of  immediate  catastrophe.^  Bousset  does 
attempt  to  explain  the  parable  of  the  mustard  seed  in 
this  sense :  since  the  mustard  plant  in  the  Orient  attains 
its  great  size  in  a  single  summer,  therefore  Jesus  expected 

'Matt.  8:11;  13:43;  25:34:26:29;  Mk.  14:25;  Luke  13:28; 
22 :  18-29,  3°- 

-  This  idea  is  even  less  sustained  by  the  latest  documentary  criticism 
than  by  the  gospels  as  they  stand.  Neither  Schmicdel  nor  Burkitt  sec- 
onds Bousset.  The  apocalyptic  element  is  not  prominent  in  the  "nu- 
cleus" of  Flinders-Pctric ;  it  is  wholly  absent  from  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  which  gives  the  core  of  Jesus's  leaching  regarding  the  kingdom. 


352  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

the  kingdom  to  reach  worldwide  extent  and  power  in  a 
few  years  —  an  exegesis  as  far  beside  the  mark  as  the 
inane  objection  of  earher  critics  that  Jesus  committed 
a  scientific  bkmder  in  this  parable,  since  the  mustard 
is  demonstrably  not  "the  least  of  all  seeds." 


n 

The  significance  and  worth  of  the  kingdom,  in  the  mind 
of  Jesus,  consisted  in  the  fact  that  it  was  the  kingdom  of 
God.  The  deepest  need  of  man's  nature  is  to  know  God, 
and  this  knowledge  men  sought  after,  longed  for,  but 
never  fully  attained,  until  the  coming  into  the  world  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth.  For  he  first  clearly  made  known  to 
men  a  God  who  is  our  Father  in  heaven,  a  Being  whose 
inmost  nature  is  holy  love.  Gods  who  hated  the  world, 
men  had  believed  in  ere  this,  and  trembled  before  them. 
A  Creator  of  the  world,  an  omnipotent  King,  terrible  in 
righteousness,  merciful  only  to  the  one  people  whom  he 
had  chosen  out  of  the  nations  to  be  peculiarly  his  —  such 
a  God  the  Jews  had  believed  in  and  slavishly  obeyed. 
But  a  Father,^  a  God  who  loves  all  the  creatures  he  has 

1  Father  is  as  distinctively  the  Christian  name  for  God  as  Jehovah  is 
the  Jewish.  "Father"  as  a  name  for  God  occurs  about  a  dozen  times  in 
the  Old  Testament,  and  over  two  hundred  times  in  the  New.  Five  pray- 
ers of  Jesus  are  recorded,  and  in  each  of  these  he  addresses  God  as  Father 
(Matt.  11:25-27;  26:39,42;  Luke  33:34,  46)  and  in  the  longest  of 
these  the  name  is  thrice  repeated.  The  disciples  are  bidden  to  follow  his 
example  (Matt.  6  :  q  ;  23  :  9).  This  was  not  the  current  Jewish  habit,  as 
the  prayers  of  the  Pharisee  and  Publican  testify  (Luke  18 :  11-13).  The 
fourth  Gospel  greatly  emphasizes  the  Fatherhood  idea,  using  the  term 
about  ninety  times.  If  any  deny  that  this  gospel  gives  an  accurate  his- 
torical reflection  of  the  ideas  of  Jesus,  it  must  at  least  be  allowed  to  meas- 
ure how  deeply  he  had  impressed  this  idea  on  his  disciples. 


THE   SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  353 

made  —  all,  not  a  chosen  race,  nor  a  chosen  few  —  and 
with  parental  solicitude  ever  seeks  the  good  of  all :  of 
such  a  God  the  world  had  not  so  much  as  heard.  It  can 
hardly  be  said  to  believe  in  such  a  God  now.  Good 
News  like  this  seemed  too  good  to  be  true.  Yet  Jesus 
habitually  spoke  of  God  as  "my  Father" ;  in  his  teach- 
ing he  spoke  of  him  to  men  as  "your  Father";  and  he 
taught  his  disciples  to  pray  to  God  as  "Our  Father,  who 
art  in  Heaven."  Aristotle,  one  of  the  wisest  of  pagans, 
said,  "Love  to  God  does  not  exist ;  it  is  absurd  to  talk  of 
such  a  thing,  for  God  is  an  unknowable  being."  ^  But 
Jesus  came  to  reveal  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  and  so  to 
make  the  love  of  God  not  only  possible  but  normal,  since 
he  is  in  every  way  worthy  of  our  love,  the  one  Being  who 
is  absolutely  and  unchangeably  good.^ 

Will  it  be  believed  that  learned  Doctors  of  Divinity 
are  still  arguing  whether  Jesus  warrants  anybody  but 
a  Christian  —  i.e.  a  professed  follower  of  his  —  in  calling 
God  "Our  Father  who  art  in  Heaven"  ?  To  Christians, 
they  say,  he  is  indeed  a  loving  Father ;  to  all  others  he 
is  still  the  same  terrible  hater  of  iniquity  and  punisher  of 
the  evil-doer,  that  men  thought  him  to  be  before  the  com- 
ing of  Jesus.  One  wonders  if  such  disputants  ever  read 
the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son  !  So  little  as  that  do 
Christian  teachers,  in  this  twentieth  century,  yet  com- 
prehend the  kind  of  God  that  Jesus  revealed  to  us :  the 
Father  of  all  men  to  whom  he  has  given  life,  who,  as  their 
Father,  desires  with  all  the  power  of  an  infinite  and  holy 

^  "  Magn.  Moral."  ii.  11.  Plato  is  a  little  more  hopeful  —  "God,  the 
father  and  creator  of  the  universe,  is  hard  to  find,  and,  when  found,  im- 
possible to  impart  to  all."  To  use  modern  nomenclature,  Plato  is  theist, 
Aristotle  Deist.  2  M^-k  10:  18. 

2  A 


354  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

love  the  well-being  of  every  child  of  his;  who  has  no 
favorites  among  his  sons ;  whose  heart  yearns  over  the 
erring  and  sinful,  and  precisely  because  he  is  a  Being  of 
infinite  moral  perfection,  holy  and  righteous  altogether, 
hating  with  all  the  energy  of  his  nature  that  which  is  im- 
pure and  unrighteous,  longs,  not  to  punish  his  erring  and 
disobedient  children,  but  to  restore  them  to  the  joys  and 
privileges  and  purity  of  the  family  of  God.  This  is  God 
as  Jesus  reveals  him  to  us,  not  only  in  his  words,  but  in 
his  character,  at  the  same  time  assuring  us  that  "he  that 
has  seen  me  has  seen  the  Father." 

That  God  was  the  Father  of  Israel  is  an  idea  that  the 
prophets  should  have  made  familiar  to  every  Jew,  but 
the  conception  of  God  as  the  Father  of  all  mankind,  of 
each  human  being,  was  first  set  forth  with  unerring  cer- 
tainty by  Jesus.  And  if  God  is  the  Heavenly  Father  of 
all,  it  follows  that  every  man  is  still  his  child,  however 
sinful,  wandering,  or  degraded.  We  may  deny  our  son- 
ship,  we  cannot  lose  it.  Each  human  life,  in  the  light  of 
this  truth,  becomes  a  thing  of  priceless  value,  of  unspeak- 
able worth,  so  that  there  is  joy  in  the  presence  of  God  over 
a  single  wanderer  who  returns  to  home  and  love.  To  be 
"lost"  is  to  be  in  the  far  country,  away  from  the  Father's 
house,  separated  by  our  own  act  from  the  Father's  love ; 
to  be  "saved"  is  to  be  brought  back  to  our  Father's 
house  and  love,  and  restored  to  all  the  privileges  of 
sonship.  Only  the  cross  could  add  anything  to  the 
idea  of  God's  Fatherhood  that  is  given  in  the  parable 
of  the  Lost  Son. 

We  see,  therefore,  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus  a  message 
that  was  not  Jewish,  not  national,  not  racial,  but  uni- 
versal.    This  element  is  apparent  in  many  single  sayings, 


THE   SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  355 

as  well  as  in  much  of  the  paraboHc  teaching,  like  the  great 
supper,  the  marriage  of  the  king's  son,  the  wicked  hus- 
bandmen. It  is  even  more  manifest  in  his  conduct.  He 
never  turned  away  a  gentile  :  the  Samaritan  woman,  and 
the  leper  of  the  same  race,  the  servant  of  the  centurion, 
the  daughter  of  the  Canaanitish  woman,  appealed  not  in 
vain  to  his  sympathy.^  In  every  possible  way  and  on  all 
occasions,  he  taught  that  the  brotherhood  of  those  who 
are  children  of  the  common  Father  cannot  be  bounded 
by  race  or  color ;  it  must  be  as  wide  as  the  Father's  love. 
Brother  is  not  only  fellow-disciple,  it  is  fellow-man; 
neighbor  is  not  he  who  lives  next  door,  nor  co-religionist. 
Who  is  my  neighbor?  asked  the  lawyer.  And  in  the 
parable  of  the  Good  Samaritan,  Jesus  made  answer, 
"Anybody  who  needs  you;  anybody  whom  you  can 
help." 

Mr.  Blatchford  says  that  he  cannot  believe  in  the  exist- 
ence of  a  Heavenly  Father,  such  as  Jesus  reveals,  and 
sees  no  signs  of  him  anywhere.^  But  to  most  of  us  the 
difficulty  is  rather  not  to  believe  in  a  Heavenly  Father, 
for  we  see  signs  of  him  everywhere.  If  there  is  no  mercy, 
no  goodness,  no  Fatherhood,  at  the  heart  of  things,  how 
did  we,  merely  what  this  universe  has  made  us,  come  by 
such  ideas  as  goodness  and  mercy  and  fatherhood,  and 
how  is  it  that  we  are  in  some  measure  good  and  merciful 
and  fatherly?  Can  the  stream  of  human  nature  rise 
higher  than  its  source  ?  Can  we  be  good,  and  yet  derive 
from  no  source  of  goodness?  To  believe  in  the  earthly 
fatherhood  and  deny  the  Heavenly  is  the  most  monstrous 
of  all  irrationalities. 

'  John  4;  Luke  17  :  18;  Malt.  7  :  26;  Mark  7  :  26. 
^  "  God  and  my  Neighbor,"  pp.  73-78. 


356  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

From  the  first  Power  was  —  I  knew, 

Life  has  made  it  clear  to  me 
That,  strive  but  for  a  closer  view, 

Love  were  as  plain  to  me. 

But,  men  object,  you  are  anthropomorphic  when  you 
call  God  your  Father.  The  objection  is  true,  thus  far: 
we  express  the  highest  spiritual  verity  that  we  can  con- 
ceive in  terms  of  man,  but  how  else  could  men  express  their 
ideas  ?  The  words  in  which  we  vainly  try  to  clothe  our 
religious  ideas  do  not  so  much  testify  to  the  poverty  of 
our  language  as  to  the  majesty  of  our  thought.  When  we 
call  God  Father,  we  affirm  our  conviction  that  there  is  at 
the  heart  of  things  a  Life  from  which  all  things  else  pro- 
ceed ;  a  Mind,  not  less  conscious  and  intelligent  than 
ours,  but  infinitely  greater  in  scope,  whence  proceed  unity 
and  order  and  beauty ;  a  Goodness,  of  which  ours  is  but  a 
dim  reflection,  the  source  of  all  righteousness  and  justice ; 
a  Love  that  is  dimly  shadowed  in  the  present  human 
affection,  and  which  seeks  the  highest  welfare  of  all 
creatures.  Religion  is  the  seeking  of  oneness  with  this 
Life,  this  Mind,  this  Goodness,  this  Love. 

The  Fatherhood  of  God  is  the  one  thing  of  which  Jesus 
claimed  unique  and  conclusive  knowledge.  And  it  is 
this  knowledge  of  God  as  Father  that  constitutes  his  the 
one  heart  pregnant  with  celestial  fire,  that  makes  him  not 
only  the  purest  but  also  the  strongest  among  the  sons  of 
men,  that  gave  to  the  world  one  life  which  both  illustrates 
and  justifies  the  daring  words  of  the  Hebew  poet :  — 

When  I  behold  thy  heavens,  the  work  of  thy  fingers, 
The  moon  and  the  stars,  which  thou  hast  ordained, 
What  is  man  that  thou  art  mindful  of  him, 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  357 

Or  the  son  of  man  that  thou  visitest  him  ? 
And  yet,  thou  hast  made  him  Httle  less  than  God, 
Thou  hast  crowned  him  with  glory  and  honor. 

From  Jesus  we  first  learned  that  the  true  humanity  is  the 
divine  in  man.  His  sonship,  according  to  the  gospels, 
consisted  in  a  perfect  consciousness  of  moral  union  with 
God,  so  that  in  all  things  the  Father's  will  was  his,  not 
in  a  metaphysical  union  such  as  the  creeds  vainly  at- 
tempt to  set  forth  in  words.  This  was  a  relationship 
manifested  in  his  boyhood  consciousness,  that  grew  with 
his  growth.  We  need  not  pause  to  debate  the  question 
of  the  sinlessness  of  Jesus ;  but  the  record  of  his  life  dis- 
closes this  fact,  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  the  world's 
teachers:  he  never  betrays  the  slightest  sense  of  guilt, 
while  he  shows  the  highest  conception  of  goodness.  In 
this  he  differs  from  the  most  saintly  men,  whose  shame 
at  wrong-doing  is  always  proportioned  to  their  saintliness. 

m 

Jesus,  then,  proclaimed  to  men  a  God  who  loved  the 
whole  world.  No  other  view  of  his  mission  is  contained  in 
the  early  Christian  literature.  All  who  stood  near  Jesus, 
and  had  opportunities  of  learning  his  teaching,  are  a 
unit  in  this  presentation  of  the  matter.  They  all  exalt 
before  men,  as  worthy  of  their  worship  and  obedience,  a 
God  whose  nature  is  everlasting,  boundless,  holy  love. 

What  do  we  mean  when  we  say  that  Jesus  reveals  God 
as  "holy"  love?  Something  higher,  purer,  something 
more  worthy  of  our  reverence  and  imitation,  than  the 
mere  passion  or  affection  that  we  too  commonly  have  in 
mind  when  we  speak  of  love.     "Holy"   love  implies 


358  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

something  of  higher  ethical  value  than  emotion ;  it  im- 
plies a  principle  of  action  that  controls  all  thinking  and 
willing  and  doing.  It  describes  the  self-imparting  prin- 
ciple, that  quality  in  the  nature  of  God  that  impels  him 
irresistibly  to  give  himself  to  others.  This  is  the  signifi- 
cant thing  in  the  revelation  of  God  as  Father  made  to  us 
by  Jesus  :  out  of  the  heart  of  the  infinite  God,  there  wells 
up  an  inexhaustible,  an  everlasting  fountain  of  love,  in 
whose  lifegiving  stream  the  whole  world  is  bathed. 

The  object  for  which  this  love  is  imparted  to  man  is 
described  as  "salvation,"  deliverance.  The  method  of 
this  deliverance  Jesus  describes  in  varying  terms,  all  of 
which  have  in  common  the  element  of  spiritual  change. 
On  one  occasion  he  said,  "  The  truth  shall  make  you  free." 
The  man  who  is  living  an  evil  life  is  in  bondage,  he  is  a 
slave,  for  there  is  no  bondage  like  the  liberty  to  be  only 
vile,  and 

He  knows  a  baseness  in  his  blood 

At  such  strange  war  with  something  good, 

He  may  not  do  the  thing  he  would. 

Jesus  promises  to  free  him  through  the  truth  —  to  make 
him  free  in  the  only  real  sense :  free  to  love,  free  to  do 
justly,  free  to  hear  and  obey  the  highest  dictates  of  his 
nature,  not  the  lowest. 

Again,  Jesus  speaks  of  salvation  as  conditioned  on 
repentance  —  a  change  of  attitude  towards  God  and  man, 
something  within  the  power  of  man.  He  recognized  the 
fact  that  man  is  more  than  a  congeries  of  thoughts  and 
emotions,  that  he  is  ruled  by  will,  that  he  has  a  purpose. 
And  he  also  recognized  that  man  does  not  acquire  good- 
ness by  endosmosis,  but  by  voHtion,  or  rather,  by  a  series 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  359 

of  volitions,  until  a  habit  of  right-doing  is  established. 
The  Prodigal's  "I  will  arise  and  go  unto  my  Father"  was 
a  determination  quite  within  his  own  power,  resting  on  a 
sense  of  wrong-doing,  "I  have  sinned  against  heaven  and 
in  thy  sight."  It  was  the  constant  endeavor  of  Jesus 
to  induce  men  to  turn  from  the  life  of  the  mere  human 
animal,  that  he  might  lift  them  into  the  life  of  the  sons  of 
God. 

Again,  Jesus  declares  that  the  secret  of  deliverance 
hangs  on  faith,  trust.  But  what  sort  of  trust  ?  Preach- 
ers and  theologians  have  taught  that  to  be  saved  we  must 
"trust  in  the  merits  of  Christ"  or  "trust  in  Christ's 
atonement  for  sin,"  and  the  Hke.  But  Jesus  never  said 
these  things.  He  said  deliverance  comes  to  man  by 
trusting  in  Him  and  doing  his  commandments.  The  first 
is  a  legahstic  conception  of  salvation,  the  second  is  vital. 
The  one  grows  out  of  a  system  of  theology,  the  other  out 
of  a  sense  of  personal  need.  Trusting  Jesus  is  deliver- 
ance, because  it  is  spiritual  dynamic ;  it  brings  man  into 
vital  relation  with  Jesus  and  his  Father,  involves  a  new 
life  of  love  and  righteousness,  and  insures  power  to  con- 
tinue in  that  life  and  develop  into  likeness  to  God. 

Salvation  by  believing  something  has  no  place  in  the 
Good  News  —  that  was  the  error  of  the  Scribes,  as  sal- 
vation by  doing  something  was  the  error  of  the  Pharisees. 
By  "faith"  Jesus  did  not  mean  pronouncing  a  series  of 
formulas  about  him,  he  meant  spiritual  receptiveness. 
The  people  to  whom  he  spoke  were  like  present-day 
Christians,  so  self-satisfied,  so  blinded  by  religious  con- 
ceit, clad  in  such  an  impenetrable  armor  of  pride,  that  his 
Good  News  had  no  significance  for  them.  His  teaching 
coulfi  find  no  entrance  into  their  minds,  no  echo  in  their 


360  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

hearts ;  hence  it  evoked  no  response.  But  sometimes 
he  found  hunger  for  the  truth,  spiritual  receptivity,  where 
he  had  least  reason  to  expect  it  —  as  in  the  case  of  the 
centurion,  of  whom  he  testified,  "I  have  not  found  such 
faith,  no,  not  in  Israel."  This  is  the  secret  of  his  oft- 
repeated  saying,  that  the  kingdom  must  be  received  as 
a  little  child,  with  that  receptivity  of  impressions  of 
spiritual  truth  that  is  characteristic  of  childhood,  the 
time  when 

The  earth  and  every  common  sight 
To  them  do  seem 
Apparelled  in  celestial  light, 
The  glory  and  the  freshness  of  a  dream. 

But  we  reach  the  heart  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  regard- 
ing deliverance  when  he  represents  it  as  the  impartation 
of  life,  eternal  life.  It  is  this  element  of  his  teaching 
that,  when  it  has  been  fully  apprehended,  has  made  his 
Good  News  a  message  that  finds  the  deepest  longing  of 
the  human  heart  and  fully  satisfies  it.  "In  bringing  life 
and  immortality  to  fight,"  as  the  apostle  phrases  it,  he 
brought  to  the  world  a  draught  for  which  it  had  been  long 
athirst.     For, 

Whatever  crazy  sorrow  saith, 

No  life  that  breathes  with  human  breath 

Has  ever  truly  longed  for  death. 

'Tis  life,  whereof  our  nerves  are  scant, 
Oh  fife,  not  death,  for  which  we  pant ; 
More  life  and  fuller  that  I  want. 

But  how  often  and  for  how  long  has  this  teaching  of 
Jesus  been  misapprehended,  since  men  have  persisted  in 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  361 

thinking  of  the  "eternal"  hfe  as  the  life  of  heaven,  a  life 
of  the  hereafter  that  cannot  begin  until  this  life  is  ended. 
Yet  Jesus  said  explicitly,  "He  that  trusts  me  (commits 
himself  wholly  to  me,  becomes  mine  in  thought  and  con- 
duct) has  eternal  life."  He  represented  the  eternal  life 
that  he  came  to  impart  as  the  present  possession  of  every 
one  who  truly  became  his  disciple.  And  that  meant 
simply  this  :  the  purpose  of  God's  love,  the  end  for  which 
he  is  revealed  to  us  in  Jesus,  is  that  we  may  be  brought 
into  a  character  hke  his  own.  Nothing  is  more  charac- 
teristic of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  than  this,  and  it  is  the 
foundation  of  all  his  ethics.  A  single  paragraph  from 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  representative  of  all :  — 

You  have  heard  that  it  was  said, 

"Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor 

And  hate  thine  enemy." 
But  I  say  to  you, 

"Love  your  enemies, 

And  pray  for  your  persecutors, 

That  you  may  become  children  of  your  Father  in  Heaven ; 

For  he  makes  his  sun  rise  on  evil  and  good, 

And  sends  rain  on  righteous  and  unrighteous. 

For,  if  you  love  those  that  love  you,  what  reward  have 
you? 

Even  the  tax-gatherers  do  that,  do  they  not  ? 

And  if  you  are  courteous  to  your  brothers  only,  what  are 
you  doing  more  than  others  ? 

Even  the  heathen  do  the  same,  do  they  not  ? 

Be  you  therefore  perfect. 

As  your  Father  in  Heaven  is  perfect.^ 

Deliverance  consists,  therefore,  in  being  changed  from 
what  we  are  into  what  God  is.     We  are  "saved"  when 

1  Matt.  5  :  43-48- 


362  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

we  begin  to  manifest  a  character  of  holy  love.  And  Jesus 
promises  to  impart  this  life,  this  character,  to  every 
disciple ;  he  has  engaged  to  supply  just  what  every  man 
is  conscious  of  lacking,  not  ethical  ideals  so  much  as  ethi- 
cal power.  Jesus  makes  it  possible  for  every  man  to  have 
this  life,  and  to  have  it  abundantly  —  that  is  to  say,  to 
realize  fully,  not  in  some  small  measure  merely,  this  ideal 
of  character.  The  cynic  who  says,  "You  can't  change 
human  nature,  it  is  bound  to  remain  selfish,"  and  the 
enthusiast  who  seeks  to  build  his  Utopia  on  an  unchanged 
human  nature,  are  alike  wrong.  Jesus  can  change  human 
nature,  and  on  that  changed  nature  a  new  social  order 
may  be  built.  He  can  and  does  change  men  from  lovers 
of  evil,  doers  of  unrighteousness,  into  lovers  and  doers  of 
the  good  and  the  true.  Nobody  can  read  a  book  like 
Mr.  Begbie's  "Twice-born  Men"  and  have  any  doubt 
of  that. 

This  it  is  to  be  a  Christian  :  to  make  Jesus  our  Teacher 
and  Exemplar,  and  to  live  his  life  among  men.  As  he 
reveals  to  us  a  God  of  holy  love,  who  unstintedly  imparts 
himself  to  men,  as  he  himself  lived  a  life  of  self-sacrifice 
and  service,  so  a  disciple  of  Jesus  to  whom  life  has  been 
abundantly  imparted  will  be  animated  by  a  like  spirit  of 
unselfish  love  and  service.  Jesus  was  the  great  Deliverer, 
but  every  follower  of  his  must  be  a  deliverer  also.  Jesus 
gave  himself  t©  men,  not  only  on  the  cross,  on  which  the 
Christian  world  has  too  exclusively  fixed  its  eyes,  but  in 
lowly  service  through  his  whole  life,  of  which  we  are  far 
too  oblivious.  "The  Son  of  Man  came  not  to  be  min- 
istered unto,  but  to  minister."  Many  a  follower  of  Jesus 
has  given  his  life  for  his  fellows,  in  the  very  spirit  of  his 
Master,  and  the  impulse  to  do  this  is  inseparable  from 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS   OF  JESUS  363 

Christianity.     Seeing  in  God  their  Father  in  Heaven,  his 
disciples  must  see  in  every  man  their  brother  on  earth. 

rv 

And  so  Jesus  summed  up  all  religion  and  all  ethics  in 
the  twin  precept :  "Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with 
all  thy  heart,"  and,  ''Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as 
thyself."  On  these  two  commandments  hang  not  only 
all  the  law  and  the  prophets,  but  all  the  Good  News. 
Love  to  God  and  man  are  the  two  hemispheres  of  duty. 
Rehgion,  in  the  conception  of  Jesus,  consists  in  the  ser- 
vice of  man  and  the  vision  of  God ;  and  commonly  the 
vision  comes  to  us  as  the  reward  of  service  —  as  also  our 
own  Longfellow  has  taught  us. 

This  is  the  uniqueness  of  Jesus  as  an  ethical  teacher. 
Instead  of  a  bewildering  subdivision  of  duties  and  com- 
mandments, a  medley  of  great  and  small,  inextricable 
confusion  of  important  and  unimportant,  Jesus  gave  men 
one  simple  law,  "Thou  shalt  love."  Love,  as  he  used 
the  word,  does  not  depend  on  the  lovableness  of  the 
object,  but  on  our  will ;  it  is  not,  as  we  have  seen,  pri- 
marily, an  emotion  or  sentiment,  but  a  principle  of  con- 
duct, a  habit  of  unselfishness,  of  kindness,  of  ministry. 
We  cannot  will  our  emotions,  but  we  can  will  our  conduct. 
And  perhaps  it  would  be  as  well,  as  has  been  suggested, 
if  we  could  substitute  for  the  word  "love,"  which  has 
come  to  have  all  sorts  of  misleading  connotations,  the 
term  "good  will."  We  are  resolutely  to  keep  ourselves  in 
an  attitude  of  good  will  towards  all.  "The  man  is  most 
truly  a  man  in  the  attitude  of  good  will ;  and  he  is  at  his 
best  for  every  kind  of  successful  effort  when  his  good  will, 
ruling  every  impulse  and  appetite,  compels  the  whole 


364  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

menagerie  of  animal  forces  within  him  to  do  the  work  of 
his  manhood."  ^ 

When  Jesus  repealed  the  ancient  law  of  hate,  and  said, 
"Love  your  enemies,"  he  commanded  the  Jew  to  cherish 
good  will  towards  the  Roman.  Nothing  but  a  change  of 
nature,  a  complete  reversal  of  ethical  standards,  would 
enable  a  Jew  to  do  that.  When  Jesus  says  to  the  men 
of  to-day,  "Love  your  enemies,"  he  commands  the  work- 
ing-man to  cherish  good  will  towards  the  capitalist.  Can 
that  be  obeyed  without  a  change  of  nature?  But  to 
carry  this  spirit  of  good  will  into  all  social  relations  is  the 
idea  of  the  kingdom  of  God  that  Jesus  proclaimed.  The 
highest  test  of  character  is  not  loving  friends,  or  even 
helping  the  needy,  but  in  manifesting  good  will  to  those 
who  have  wronged  us  —  not  merely  foregoing  revenge 
(though  that  is  noble) ,  but  suppressing  just  resentment 
of  injury  and  actively  doing  good  to  him  who  has  done 
evil  to  us.  "The  everlasting  rule,"  says  Trench,  "is 
that  thou  render  good  for  the  brother's  ill ;  the  shape  in 
which  thou  shalt  render  it,  love  shall  prescribe."  Though 
Jesus  gives  many  precepts,  they  are  all  facets  of  the  one 
precious  jewel,  love. 

The  chief  of  all  possessions  is  self-possession,  but  that 
a  man  may  truly  possess  himself  he  must  first  have  re- 
nounced self.  The  greatest  good  that  God  has  bestowed 
on  man  is  life ;  but  in  order  to  find  his  life  a  man  must 
lose  it.  The  desire  of  distinction  is  probably  the  most  im- 
perious of  all  social  impulses ;  but  to  be  great  in  the  king- 
dom is  to  be  servant  of  all.  This  Great  Paradox  of  Jesus 
is  a  corollary  from  his  law  of  love,  and  is  the  profoundest 
of  his  social  ethics. 

1  Dole,  "The  Coming  Religion,"  Boston,  1910,  p.  64. 


THE   SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  365 

Till  this  truth  thou  knowest : 

"Die  to  live  again," 
Strangerlike  thou  goest 

Through  a  world  of  pain, 

says  Goethe,  though  his  life  gave  little  token  that  he  had 
himself  learned  a  truth  that  he  so  clearly  expresses.  By 
performance  of  a  menial  service,  according  to  the  fourth 
gospel,  Jesus  illustrated  this  idea  of  the  practical  outcome 
of  love  in  our  relations  to  our  fellows,  as,  girded  with  a 
towel,  he  washed  the  feet  of  his  disciples.  In  this  labor, 
usually  relegated  to  a  slave,  he  visualized  the  nature  of 
that  which  he  inculcated  as  love  of  the  brother.^ 

"He  that  loses  his  life  for  my  sake  shall  find  it,"  is  not 
a  barren  counsel  of  perfection,  but  a  social  law,  verifiable 
as  such  by  every  man  for  himself.  Life  cannot  be  really 
lived  unless  it  is  lived  for  something  that  death  cannot 
destroy.  But  a  life  lived  for  self  will  soon  be  destroyed 
by  death  —  only  a  life  lived  for  others  leaves  behind  it 
permanent  results.  It  is  Tolstoi's  great  merit  to  have 
perceived  this;  it  is  his  great  defect  that  he  could  not 
perceive  one  thing  more :  that  Jesus  inculcated  renun- 
ciation as  a  spirit,  not  as  a  law.  *'To  renounce  every- 
thing," he  says,  "therefore,  could  not,  it  seemed  to  me  at 
first,  be  an  absolute  condition  of  salvation.  But  the 
moment  this  ceased  to  be  an  absolute  condition,  clearness 
and  precision  were  at  an  end."  The  root  of  the  great 
Russian's  difficulty  was  that  he  insisted  on  finding  in  the 
discourses  of  Jesus  what  Jesus  never  put  there,  the  clear- 
ness and  precision  of  a  legal  code. 

^  John  13 :  4-1 1.  Like  the  story  of  the  woman  taken  in  adultery,  this 
incident  authenticates  itself  as  certainly  true,  because  impossible  of  in- 
vention. 


366  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

But  Jesus  did  not  give  us  a  code ;  nothing  was  further 
from  his  intention  than  that;  he  taught  us  to  live  the 
Hfe  of  the  spirit.  And  living  that  Hfe,  no  man  can  find 
fulness  of  hfe  by  living  to  himself ;  only  as  he  lives  in  and 
for  others  does  he  truly  find  himself.  Yet  the  renuncia- 
tion in  which  Jesus  tells  us  that  we  obtain  our  greatest 
blessedness,  is  not  that  renunciation  of  the  world  which 
ascetics  of  all  ages  and  of  all  faiths  have  falsely  taught, 
but  renunciation  of  self.  There  is  no  virtue  in  what  men 
commonly  call  self-denial,  but  all  virtue  is  comprised  in 
what  Jesus  called  denial  of  self.  And  as  man  finds  himself 
in  finding  the  meaning  of  love,  the  meaning  of  life  is  dis- 
closed to  him  in  service.  He  discovers  that  the  service 
of  God  is  the  service  of  his  fellows.  The  realization  of 
his  neighbor's  claims  on  him  is  a  man's  first  true  self- 
realization.  Once  it  was  thought  that  the  great  thing  was 
for  the  sinner  to  save  his  lost  soul  from  the  world ;  now 
we  know  the  great  thing  to  be  for  the  saint  to  give  his 
soul  to  a  lost  world,  and  that  he  saves  both  the  world 
and  his  soul  by  the  giving. 

Not  only  does  the  man  who  devotes  himself  to  the  sal- 
vation of  others  get  his  own  salvation  on  the  way,  and 
as  it  were  incidentally,  but  he  will  often  be  surprised  by 
its  attainment.  There  is  a  fine,  and  even  a  humorous, 
touch  in  the  parable  of  the  sheep  and  the  goats,  in  which 
Jesus  illustrates  this  idea  that  we  can  serve  God  most 
effectively  by  being  kind  to  God's  children :  the  note  of 
surprise  in  the  words  of  those  who  are  rewarded,  "Lord, 
when  saw  we  thee  hungry  and  fed  thee,  or  thirsty  and 
gave  thee  drink  ?  "  They  were  rewarded  for  their  service, 
because  they  had  not  been  serving  for  a  reward.  They 
had  done  their  duty  simply,  unostentatiously,  as  it  came 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  367 

to  them,  and  the  modesty  of  real  goodness  had  kept  them 
from  reahzing  that  they  had  been  good.  Sham  goodness, 
on  the  contrary,  wishes  all  the  world  to  see  how  very, 
very  good  it  is.  If  by  any  possibility,  sham  goodness 
could  be  conceived  among  that  throng  on  the  Judge's 
right  hand,  it  would  not  be  astonished  at  the  reward,  but 
would  complacently  accept  it  as  a  proper  recognition  of 
merit,  and  even  wonder  why  it  was  not  larger. 

Men  are  more  religious  than  they  suspect,  incurably 
religious,  even  men  who  tell  us  that  they  have  no  religion 
—  they  often  practice  what  they  do  not  preach.  Who- 
ever loves  and  serves  is  so  far  one  in  spirit  with  Jesus  and 
his  Father.  Whoever  hstens  to  the  voice  of  duty  is 
listening  to  the  voice  of  God,  and  in  his  obedience  makes 
himself  one  with  the  eternal  and  universal  Life  of  power 
and  goodness  in  whom  inhere  all  the  real  values  of  the 
world.  For  in  such  obedience  fear  has  vanished,  and  the 
peace  that  passes  understanding  takes  its  place  —  the 
fundamental  fact  of  all  religious  experience,  which  is  none 
the  less  a  fact  if  it  be  admitted  to  be  inexpHcable.  To  do 
the  will  of  God  the  Scriptures  represent  as  the  end  of  all 
religion  and  the  condition  of  all  blessedness. 


And  here  we  see  the  reconciliation  of  idealistic  and  ra- 
tionalistic ethics,  long  supposed  to  be  at  opposite  poles 
and  in  deadly  conflict.  Both  are  right,  and  so  far  from 
contradicting  each  other  that  they  offer  each  other  mu- 
tual confirmation.  The  strongest  argument  of  ideal 
ethics  is,  that  we  arc  compelled  to  posit  an  eternal  dis- 
tinction between  good  and  evil,  founded  in  the  nature  of 


368  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

God,  whose  moral  law  is  but  the  transcript  of  his  charac- 
ter. The  basal  principle  of  that  law  is  love  —  love  of 
God,  love  of  man.  The  best  statement  of  rationalistic 
ethics  is  that  right  and  wrong  are  ideas  that  derive  their 
validity  from  social  well-being.  Right  is  conduct  favor- 
able to  the  preservation  and  progress  of  the  race ;  wrong 
is  unfavorable  conduct.  But  love  is  the  only  conduct 
that  is  favorable  to  the  race ;  altruism  is  the  necessary 
condition  of  human  progress.  Recognition  of  human 
brotherhood  is,  on  either  theory  of  ethics,  the  foundation 
of  all  right  conduct  between  man  and  man. 

This  has  been  vehemently  denied  by  the  German 
philosopher,  Nietzsche,  among  others.  "Life,"  he  says, 
"is  essentially  the  appropriation,  the  injury,  the  sub- 
duing of  the  alien  and  weak.  It  is  suppression,  compul- 
sion, the  enforcing  of  its  own  forms.  It  is  assimilation, 
and  at  the  least  and  gentlest,  exploitation."  He  scouts 
altruism  :  "The  weak  and  crippled  should  go  to  the  wall : 
that  is  the  first  principle  of  our  philanthropy."  "Do  I 
counsel  you  to  love  your  neighbor?"  asks  Zarathustra; 
and  this  is  his  answer,  "Nay,  I  counsel  you  rather  to  shun 
your  neighbor,  and  to  love  those  farthest  away."  Nietz- 
sche preached  unadulterated  selfishness:  "One  must 
learn  to  love  himself,  with  a  wholesome  and  healthy  love, 
so  that  one  is  sufficient  to  himself,  and  does  not  run  about 
in  ways  that  are  described  as  love  of  one's  neighbor." 
And  he  professed  to  found  his  ethic  on  the  results  of 
science,  the  law  of  evolution  and  the  survival  of  the  fittest : 
"Sympathy opposes,  in  the  main,  the  law  of  development, 
which  is  the  law  of  selection.  It  preserves  what  is  ripe 
for  destruction,  it  operates  to  defend  the  disinherited 
and  condemned  among  men.     This  disheartening  and 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACfflNGS  OF  JESUS  369 

contagious  instinct  ...  is  ...  a  chief  instrument  in  the 
advance  of  decadence."  ^ 

It  is  doubtless  quite  true  that  the  only  practicable 
ethics  in  a  society  organized  on  the  principle  of  compe- 
tition are  the  tooth-and-claw  ethics  of  the  jungle.  The 
Golden  Rule  is  impossible  in  such  a  society.  Jesus  and 
Socialism  alike  demand  the  abolition  of  competition  and 
the  substitution  of  some  form  of  collectivism,  which  is 
simply  brotherhood  applied  to  economics.  Nietzsche 
clearly  perceived  this  essential  affinity  of  Christianity  and 
Socialism,  and  he  therefore  hated  both  with  an  impartial 
and  undying  hatred.  But  Marxian  Socialism  should 
have  been  welcome  to  him.  The  present  evils  of  society 
are  caused  by  selfishness  and  greed,  and  the  rem.edy  that 
Marx  proposes  is  —  more  greed  and  selfishness,  the  class 
struggle.     Similia  similibus  curantur  I 

But  Nietzsche's  philosophy  has  resulted  from  a  mis- 
reading of  the  facts  of  the  universe,  a  misunderstanding  of 
the  law  of  selection,  an  interpretation  of  Darwin  that  is 
both  narrow  and  false.  Tennyson  is  responsible  for  much 
of  this  popular  misunderstanding  of  evolution,  and  his 
stanza  of  "In  Memoriam"  — 

Who  trusted  God  was  love  indeed 
And  love  Creation's  final  law  — 
Tho'  nature,  red  in  tooth  and  claw 

With  ravine,  shriek'd  against  the  creed  — 

is  challenged  as  sharply  by  science  as  by  theology.     This 

'  The  climax  of  Nietzsche's  insane  conceit  is  reached  in  this  saying  on 
the  ethics  of  Jesus  :  "  Beheve  me,  my  brethren  !  He  died  too  early  ;  he 
himself  would  have  revoked  his  doctrine,  had  he  reached  mine  age  ! 
Noble  enough  to  revoke  he  was !"  Also  Sprach  Zarathuslra,  First  part, 
"Of  Free  Death,"  e/ a/. 

2B 


370  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

idea  of  a  universal  ruthlessness  of  struggle  is  not  the 
Darwinism  of  Darwin,  but  of  some  unwise  interpreters. 
''Those  communities,"  says  Darwin  himself,  "which 
include  the  greatest  number  of  the  most  sympathetic 
members,  would  flourish  best  and  raise  the  greatest  num- 
ber of  offspring."  ^  Love  is  the  law  of  the  universe,  not 
of  human  life  only.  Much  warfare  of  extermination  does 
go  on  in  the  lower  forms  of  life,  but  there  is  at  the  same 
time  much  of  mutual  support,  aid,  defence.  Maeterlinck 
has  opened  our  eyes  to  this  in  his  book  on  the  Bee. 
Those  animals  that  live  in  groups  or  societies,  and  ac- 
quire habits  of  mutual  aid,  are  the  "fittest"  for  life's 
struggle.  Competition  exists  in  nature,  but  progress  is 
made  by  the  elimination  of  competition  and  the  growth 
of  cooperation.  Not  strife  and  death,  but  peace,  help- 
fulness, and  love  is  nature's  way  upward. 

And  this  has  been  conspicuously  true  of  man,  in  all 
stages  of  his  development.  "The  first  men  who  substi- 
tuted the  state  of  mutual  peace  for  that  of  mutual  war," 
says  Huxley,  "whatever  the  motive  which  impelled  them 
to  take  that  step,  created  society.  But  in  establishing 
peace,  they  obviously  put  a  limit  upon  the  struggle  for 
existence.  Between  the  members  of  society,  at  any  rate, 
it  was  not  to  be  war  a  outrance.  Of  all  the  successive 
shapes  which  society  has  taken,  that  most  approaches 
perfection  in  which  the  war  of  individuals  is  most  strictly 
limited."  ^  The  survival  of  the  fittest  is  in  no  way  incom- 
patible with  the  gradual  improvement  of  all,  as  Huxley 
shows  in  his  description  of  that  conduct  wh  ich  is  ethically 
best :  "In  place  of  ruthless  self-assertion  it  demands  self- 

1  "Descent  of  Man,"  Chap.  IV  and  V. 
^  "Evolution  and  Ethics,"  p.  104. 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS   OF  JESUS  371 

restraint ;  in  place  of  thrusting  aside  or  treading  down 
all  competitors,  it  requires  that  the  individual  shall  not 
merely  respect  but  shall  help  his  fellows ;  its  influence  is 
directed  not  so  much  to  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  as  to 
the  fitting  of  as  many  as  possible  to  survive.  It  repu- 
diates the  gladiatorial  theory  of  existence.  It  demands 
that  each  man  who  enters  into  the  enjoyment  of  the  ad- 
vantages of  a  polity  shall  be  mindful  of  his  debt  to  those 
who  have  laboriously  constructed  it ;  and  shall  take  heed 
that  no  act  of  his  weakens  the  fabric  in  which  he  has  been 
permitted  to  live."  ^  No  better  exposition  of  the  element 
common  to  the  teachings  of  Jesus  and  the  aims  of  Social- 
ism has  ever  been  made  than  this,  by  one  who  was  neither 
Christian  nor  socialist.  The  philosophy  of  Nietzsche 
was  refuted  before  it  was  stated. 

That  God  is  our  Father,  that  this  is  God's  world,  that 
we  are  all  God's  sons,  bound  by  the  tie  of  brotherhood 
into  one  great  family  —  these  are  the  corner-stones  on 
which  all  the  social  teachings  of  Jesus  rest.  It  was  be- 
cause he  believed  these  things  so  firmly  that  Jesus  had 
the  courage  to  attempt  the  establishment  of  the  king- 
dom of  God,  a  society  ruled  by  God's  spirit  of  unselfish 
love.  His  social  ideal  may  be  summed  up  by  saying 
that  his  aim  was  to  make  all  men  brothers,  by  making 
them  consciously  sons  of  God  ;  and  that  his  firm  convic- 
tion was,  that  only  by  brotherly  love,  thus  implanted  and 
sustained  in  human  hearts,  can  the  problems  of  society 
be  solved. 

VI 

Aristotle  founded  his  ethics  on  the  abstract  idea  of  the 
summum  bonum,  which  he  decides  is  happiness.     His 

*  Ibid.  p.  20,  81. 


372  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

whole  scheme  of  moral  principles  and  moral  duties  is 
logically  deduced  from  that  abstract  idea.  Jesus  does 
not  discuss  abstract  ethical  principles :  What  is  the 
summum  honum?  What  is  conscience?  Has  man  free 
will  ?  He  begins  with  a  concrete  conception  of  human 
society,  in  which  love  or  mutual  good  will  is  the  universal 
law,  and  all  his  other  precepts  ray  out  from  this. 

The  result  of  the  principle  of  love  in  human  conduct, 
Jesus  uniformly  calls  ''righteousness";  and  as  love  has 
its  two  hemispheres,  so  has  righteousness.  By  this  com- 
prehensive term  Jesus  means,  first  a  right  relation  to  God, 
and  second,  right  conduct  to  man.  The  right  relation 
to  God  consists  in  recognition  of  his  Fatherhood,  and  the 
correlative  duty  of  sonship.  For,  though  all  men  are 
sons  of  God,  and  can  be  nothing  else,  by  becoming  dis- 
ciples of  Jesus  and  receiving  the  life  that  he  imparts,  they 
become  sons  of  God  in  a  more  intimate  sense.  The 
Prodigal  was  a  son  in  the  far  country  among  the  swine, 
but  not  until  he  arose  and  went  to  his  father,  confessed 
his  fault,  and  received  his  father's  forgiveness  did  he 
know  the  depth  of  a  father's  love  and  enter  into  his  real 
sonship.  The  first  part  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is 
mainly  given  to  teaching  this  righteousness  toward  God. 
We  need  pause  only  to  note  how  flatly  Jesus  contradicts 
the  Jewish  ideal  of  righteousness :  that  outward  ritual, 
formal  piety,  constituted  conduct  that  would  win  the  fa- 
vorable verdict  of  God.  The  righteousness  of  his  disciples 
must  exceed  the  righteousness  of  the  Scribes  and  Phari- 
sees, because  it  must  take  account  of  the  spirit  of  religious 
and  ethical  precepts,  not  of  their  mere  letter. 

In  the  second  part  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  the 
man  ward  side  of  righteousness  is  expounded,  and  from 


THE   SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  373 

the  same  point  of  view :  it  must  be  genuine,  not  formal. 
It  is  so  easy  to  exaggerate  the  value  of  the  external  and 
formal,  to  atone  for  a  lack  of  spirituality  by  la^dng  an 
additional  stress  on  ritual.  But  righteousness  is  some- 
thing deeper  than  its  outward  expression,  else  goodness 
might  be  capable  of  scientific  determination  in  terms  of 
kilowatts,  and  we  might  express  love  in  amperes  or  voli- 
tion in  voltage.  Formahsts,  legaKsts,  Pharisees,  con- 
tinually attempt  this  identification  of  the  outward  with 
the  inward,  until  the  latter  is  altogether  denied  and 
righteousness  comes  to  signify  an  act  and  not  a  state  of 
soul.  It  was  the  first  work  of  Jesus  to  correct  this  error 
and  to  recognize  the  true  nature  of  righteousness,  as  pro- 
ceeding from  love,  good  will. 

Jesus  differed  from  other  etliical  teachers  in  that  he 
aimed  not  merely  to  change  conduct,  but  to  transform 
character  —  to  transform  character  as  the  only  effective 
means  of  changing  conduct.  He  goes  behind  the  out- 
ward act  to  the  hidden  motive ;  make  the  tree  good  and 
the  fruit  will  also  be  good.  He  concerned  himself  pri- 
marily, not  with  what  a  man  does,  but  with  what  he  is. 
While  others  sought  to  impose  on  their  followers  an 
elaborate  code,  he  sought  to  create  a  new  man.  Right- 
eousness is  goodness ;  it  springs  out  of  love,  and  shows 
itself  in  deeds  of  mercy  and  compassion  to  men,  not  in 
ceremonial  exactness.  "Ye  must  be  born  again"  is  fun- 
damental;  "conversion  is  the  only  means  by  which  a 
radically  bad  person  can  be  changed  into  a  radically 
good  person."  ^ 

Jesus  clearly  perceived  that  the  Pharisees,  though  they 
opposed  the  worldly-minded  Sadducees,  were  not  them- 

*  "Twice-born  Men,"  p.  17. 


374  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

selves  spiritually  minded.  To  them  righteousness  was 
legalism,  formahsm,  individual.  They  had  no  concep- 
tion of  sohdarity,  brotherhood,  of  conduct  as  affecting 
others  and  determined  as  to  its  ethical  character  by  its 
effect  on  others.  In  their  conception,  righteousness  was 
entirely  a  matter  between  man  and  God,  and  had  nothing 
to  do  with  a  man's  relations  to  his  fellows.  The  pure  soul 
of  Jesus  loathed  the  Pharisee  who  could  practice  iniquity 
toward  the  poor  six  days  of  the  week,  and  on  the  seventh 
make  long  prayers  and  prate  of  righteousness.  The 
Pharisee  practised  a  scrupulous  rehgiosity.  Jesus  lived 
religion. 

Some  will  have  it  that  Jesus  differed  from  the  Pharisees 
only  in  giving  a  new  set  of  rules  for  human  conduct, 
whereas  the  real  difference  was  that  the  Pharisees  taught 
rules,  while  Jesus  taught  principles.  He  came  not  to  give 
laws  but  to  give  life.  They  were  concerned  with  the 
fruitage  of  evil  only ;  he  struck  at  the  root  of  the  great 
Upas  tree  of  evil.  And  so  he  declared  that  inward 
purity  takes  precedence  of  outward,  that  filial  love  is 
more  important  than  gifts  to  the  Temple,  that  mercy  is 
more  worthful  than  sabbath-keeping,  that  truth  and  jus- 
tice are  more  to  be  sought  than  accuracy  of  tithing. 
Such  teaching  was  fitted  to  exert  a  blissful  emancipating 
effect.  The  legal  servitude  was  to  be  exchanged  for 
filial  relationship,  love  was  to  take  the  place  of  fear,  a 
sense  of  freedom  and  gladness  would  replace  the  old  con- 
sciousness of  the  curse  of  the  law.  Truly,  as  compared 
with  the  Rabbis',  Jesus  might  call  his  yoke  easy  and  his 
burden  light. 

The  Jew,  under  the  lead  of  the  Pharisees,  had  come  to 
neglect  social  righteousness  altogether;    he  had  substi- 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  375 

tuted  ritual  for  brotherly  love.  He  had  forgotten,  if  he 
ever  knew,  that  a  man  cannot  be  right  with  God  and 
wrong  with  his  fellow-man ;  he  tried  vainly  to  atone  for 
social  unrighteousness  by  piety  toward  God.  That  is 
where  many  are  making  a  similar  mistake  to-day  — 
those  Christian  Pharisees  who  believe  that  they  can 
cheat  their  fellows  and  make  it  right  with  God  by  build- 
ing a  church  or  hospital  or  endowing  a  college.  It  was 
not  because  they  tithed  mint,  anise,  and  cummin  that 
Jesus  condemned  the  Pharisees,  but  because  they  neg- 
lected justice  and  mercy  and  faith.  He  did  not  find 
their  ethics  too  strict,  but  too  lax.  Men  who  boast  that 
"  their  religion  is  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount "  do  not  under- 
stand the  first  word  of  Jesus.  He  not  only  did  not  destroy 
the  law,  —  the  Jewish  ethics  that  he  found,  — ■  but  he 
filled  it  full.  He  gave  a  keener  edge  to  every  precept,  he 
put  a  new  intensity  of  meaning  into  every  ''Thou  shalt 
not."  But  he  went  further:  for  the  "Thou  shalt  not" 
of  Moses  he  substituted  his  own  "Thou  shalt."  He  saw 
that  ethical  perfection  is  positive,  not  negative ;  it  is  more 
than  mere  sinlessness,  it  is  victory  over  the  powers  of  evil. 
We  ascribe  to  Jesus  the  perfect  character,  not  because  he 
avoided  the  ethically  bad,  but  because  he  constantly 
overcame  evil  and  did  the  ethically  good.  For  this 
reason,  Christianity  is  not  merely  a  new  ethic,  but  a  new 
life,  the  continued  presence  in  the  world  of  a  vivific 
Personality. 

No  such  lofty  ethical  ideal  was  ever  proposed  before, 
and  Christians  have  spent  a  large  part  of  their  time  and 
thought  ever  since  in  explaining  away,  and  lowering  to 
what  they  arc  pleased  to  account  a  practicable  standard, 
the  teachings  of  that  incomparable  discourse.     Yet  the 


376  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

very  loftiness  of  the  standard  is  its  chief  practical  value. 
To  take  but  a  single  instance :  it  is  conceivable  that  a 
man  may  never  commit  an  overt  act  of  impurity,  and  yet 
his  soul  be  a  raging  hell  of  lust  and  passion  during  his 
whole  life.  Is  such  a  man  righteous  ?  The  world  says, 
Yes.  No,  says  Jesus.  What,  says  the  world,  is  it  not 
enough  that  the  man  outwardly  keeps  the  law  of  social 
righteousness?  No,  says  Jesus,  for  though  such  a  thing 
is  conceivable,  it  is  most  unlikely  to  happen.  The  in- 
ward righteousness  is  the  only  sure  foundation  of  the 
social.  The  fires  of  passion  are  likely  at  any  time  to  burst 
through  the  thin  crust  of  conventional  correctness  of 
conduct,  and  then  we  see  one  of  those  volcanic  outbursts 
of  social  unrighteousness  that  issue  in  a  terrible  tragedy 
and  astonish  and  convulse  a  whole  community.  In 
ethics,  though  not  in  nature,  grapes  may  sometimes  be 
gathered  from  thorns  and  figs  from  thistles  —  or  what  are 
passable  imitations  of  grape  and  fig  —  but  the  crop  is 
scant  and  very  uncertain.  On  the  whole,  the  words  of 
Herbert  Spencer  hold  good:  "There  is  no  political  al- 
chemy by  which  you  can  get  golden  conduct  out  of  leaden 
instincts."  ^ 

Jesus  finally  presents,  as  a  convenient  summary  of  the 
law  of  love,  a  practical  maxim  that  should  control  all  con- 
duct of  man  towards  his  fellows,  "All  things  therefore 
whatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should  do  to  you,  even  so 
do  ye  to  them."  We  need  not  waste  time  in  discussing 
whether  the  Golden  Rule  was  original  with  Jesus,  whether 
Confucius  and  other  sages  had  anticipated  him  in  whole 
or  in  part ;  the  chief  thing  is  to  note  that  the  rule  has 
been  accepted  from  then  until  now  as  the  highest  ethical 

1  "The  Coming  Slavery,"  Popular  Science  Monthly,  April,  1884. 


THE   SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  377 

truth.  And  it  is  substantially  this  that  socialists  pro- 
pose as  the  principle  that  must  underlie  the  new  order, 
and  guide  men  as  brothers  in  all  their  relations.  But 
Socialism  has  done  Christianity  good  service  in  pointing 
out  the  difl&culty,  not  to  say  the  impossibility,  of  obeying 
the  Golden  Rule  in  a  social  order  that  is  founded  on  self- 
ishness and  mutual  hostility.  No  life  of  ethical  perfec- 
tion is  possible  for  any  man  until  it  has  been  made  pos- 
sible for  all  men,  because,  as  members  of  society,  our 
interests  are  so  mutual  and  so  complex  that  no  man  can 
live  to  himself  if  he  would,  and  no  man  can  be  saved  by 
himself  or  for  himself.  To  live  the  Golden  Rule  with 
any  approach  to  completeness  demands  the  reconstruc- 
tion of  our  social  conditions. 

This  becomes  plain  if  one  considers  his  normal  life  for 
a  single  day.  The  clothing  that  one  dons  on  rising  in  the 
morning  —  do  we  ever  realize  how  it  has  been  produced 
and  by  what  means  it  has  become  ours  ?  Do  we  ever  stop 
to  think  that  the  sweat  and  the  tears  and  the  very  life- 
blood  of  men  and  women  have  gone  into  the  making  of  it, 
and  did  we  ever  try  to  compute  how  much  cruel  injustice 
and  oppression  and  cheating  have  accompanied  the  va- 
rious transactions  that  brought  the  garments  to  us  ? 
Has  not  our  only  thought  been  how  cheaply  we  could  buy 
them  and  how  becoming  they  are  to  us,  careless  how  this 
demand  for  beauty  and  a  good  bargain  might  affect  our 
fellows?  The  coffee  that  one  drinks  at  breakfast,  the 
sugar  one  puts  into  it,  the  roll  and  the  beefsteak,  or  the 
eggs  and  bacon  —  if  one  knows  anything  of  the  methods 
of  modern  business,  he  knows  that  every  article  of  food 
on  the  table  represents  a  host  of  wrongs,  which  he  is  help- 
ing to  keep  alive  and  pass  on  by  consuming  the  viands. 


378  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

Some  of  these  wrongs  have  been  done  to  us,  others  are 
wrongs  done  to  our  fellows.  The  wrongs  done  to  us 
may  usually  be  measured  in  the  increased  price  one  pays 
for  his  food,  but  many  of  the  wrongs  done  to  our  fellows 
are  measurable  in  deepest  human  misery.  Can  we,  does 
anybody,  live  the  Golden  Rule  under  such  conditions  ? 
An  angel  from  heaven  could  not  do  it. 

The  breakfast  is  eaten,  and  men  and  women  go  to  their 
daily  tasks.  How  many  things  in  the  comprehensive 
word  "business"  will  bear  the  test  of  the  Golden  Ruk? 
How  many  men  excuse  themselves  every  day  for  things 
that  will  not  bear  that  test,  things  from  which  their  own 
not- too-sensitive  consciences  revolt,  by  saying,  "If  I 
don't  do  it,  somebody  else  will."  And  it  is  absolutely 
true,  somebody  else  will.  We  need  not  complete  the 
analysis ;  let  any  one  follow  himself  through  the  day  to 
the  evening  meal,  the  evening  amusements,  the  bed  in 
which  he  sleeps  —  everywhere  the  same  conditions ! 
The  man  most  disposed  to  live  the  Golden  Rule  cannot 
do  it  by  himself,  for  it  is  a  social  rule.  Society  must  be 
delivered,  society  must  be  regenerated,  or  the  individual 
cannot  maintain  a  regenerate  life  —  society  will  prove 
too  powerful  for  the  individual,  and  will  drag  him  down 
with  it  in  a  common  ethical  ruin.  Either  the  love  of  God 
must  prevail  in  this  world,  or  the  sin  and  misery  from 
which  God  would  save  the  world  must  prevail.  Which  ? 
That  is  the  problem  of  this  age,  as  it  has  been  the  problem 
of  all  the  ages. 

This  problem  is  the  common  ground  of  Christianity 
and  Socialism.  And  it  soon  transpires,  on  survey  of  the 
ground,  that  there  is  both  agreement  and  disagreement 
between  the  ethics  of  Jesus  and  the  ideals  of  SociaUsm. 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  379 

The  agreement  has  been  perceived  by  many  socialists, 
who  have  professed  admiration  for  the  social  teachings 
of  Jesus,  and  some  even  profess  to  accept  the  teachings 
for  their  own.  But  these  socialists,  even  when  their 
sincere  acceptance  of  the  ethics  of  Jesus  is  beyond  ques- 
tion, see  in  him  only  the  Teacher,  not  a  Saviour.  They 
do  not  recognize  that  the  real  lack  of  the  world  lies  not  so 
much  in  ethical  ignorance  as  in  ethical  impotence,  that 
it  needs  regeneration  more  than  enlightenment.  The 
world  has  always  had  high  moral  ideals  —  not  the  highest 
always,  but  still  high  —  what  it  has  lacked  is  moral 
dynamic.  The  chief  significance  of  Jesus  in  the  history 
of  mankind  is  that  he  is  a  Saviour,  that  he  offers  men 
deliverance. 

vn 

The  message  of  Jesus  to  the  world,  therefore,  is  that 
social  reform  is  possible  only  through  spiritual  renewal. 
To  have  a  new  society,  there  must  first  of  all  be  a 
new  man.  The  wiser  socialists  perceive  this  to  be 
true,  but  hope  for  the  renewal  of  man  by  evolution. 
Others  put  their  trust,  as  did  Owen,  in  education.  Many 
reformers  are  busily  trying  to  make  men  sober  and  peace- 
ful and  just  and  intelligent  by  legislation.  Education 
and  legislation  are  far  from  despicable  as  aids  in  the  re- 
organization of  society ;  but  why  expect  from  them  what 
nothing  short  of  Omnipotence  can  do  ?  Education  is 
only  the  training  of  the  life  that  is,  not  the  impartation 
of  new  spiritual  life.  Legislation,  at  the  best,  can  only 
restrain  men  from  doing  the  wrong ;  love  of  the  right 
and  impulse  to  do  the  right  must  come  to  men  from 
a  source  entirely  different. 


380  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

Jesus  is  unique  in  his  method  of  righting  social  wrongs. 
He  proclaimed  revolution  by  spiritual  renewal,  not  by 
blood  and  barricades.  But  for  this  it  would  be  hard  to 
understand  his  indifference  to  organization,  liis  disregard 
of  the  institutional  side  of  rehgion,  his  aloofness  from  the 
temporal  and  political  affairs  of  his  age.  He  walked  upon 
the  waves  of  social  agitation  and  unrest ;  others  were  sub- 
merged by  them.  Others  had  attempted  to  regenerate 
society  by  providing  it  with  new  forms ;  he  saw  that  the 
only  regeneration  was  to  breathe  into  it  a  new  spirit. 
Others  had  led  a  movement  and  founded  a  sect; 
he  brought  to  men  a  new  life,  which  could  be  trusted 
to  find  for  itself  appropriate  outward  forms.  He  saw 
into  the  heart  of  things,  where  most  reformers  see  only 
the  surface. 

Here  is  an  utter  contrast  of  spirit  and  method  between 
Jesus  and  present-day  Sociahsm.  Socialism  seeks  to 
attain  the  new  society  without  the  new  man.  The  few 
who  have  insight  enough  to  see  that  this  is  hopeless 
seek  the  new  man  by  inadequate  methods.  In  some  vague 
way,  undefined  and  indefinable,  they  trust  to  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  new  man  along  with  the  new  society.  But 
man  may  be  expected  to  evolve  himself  into  the  new  man 
when  we  have  discovered  the  secret  of  lifting  ourselves 
over  a  fence  by  the  straps  of  our  boots.  Only  Jesus  has 
shown  the  world  how  the  new  man  may  be  produced, 
he  alone  possesses  the  secret  of  regeneration.  And  his- 
tory proves  abundantly,  as  does  present  experience,  that 
the  method  of  Jesus  is  practicable,  that  it  is  efficient,  that 
it  really  accomplishes  what  it  professes  to  do ;  while 
experience  and  history  alike  establish  the  negative  con- 
clusion, that  no  other  power  under  heaven  has  been  able 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  381 

to  regenerate  a  man  or  a  people.  Improvement  of  social 
conditions  demands,  as  a  precedent  condition  and  as  a 
concomitant,  better  character.  The  teaching  of  Jesus 
tells  how  better  character  may  be  had,  the  only  effective 
way  yet  known  to  mankind.  Given  a  better  man,  a 
better  social  order  is  inevitable. 

"To  be  converted,"  says  William  James,  "to  be  re- 
generated, to  receive  grace,  to  experience  religion,  to  gain 
assurance,  are  so  many  phrases  which  denote  the  process, 
gradual  or  sudden,  by  which  a  self  hitherto  divided,  and 
consciously  wrong,  inferior  and  unhappy,  becomes  uni- 
fied and  consciously  right,  superior  and  happy  in  con- 
sequence of  its  firmer  hold  upon  reHgious  realities."  * 
Whence  we  see  indeed  that  the  new  psychology  differs 
very  little  from  the  old  gospel.  In  a  letter  written  and 
published  not  long  before  his  death.  Count  Tolstoi  said 
to  a  friend,  "I  assert  and  will  never  cease  from  saying, 
that  the  only  radical  means  for  opposing  the  oppression 
of  the  masses  by  the  idle  minority  is  the  religious  rebirth 
of  the  individual.  Further,  the  founding  and  fostering 
of  religious  brotherhoods  is  the  only  social  activity  that 
is  suited  to  our  day  for  the  man  of  conscience  who  will 
not  be  an  oppressor.  I  agree  with  you  that  the  establish- 
ment of  these  religious  communities  can  relieve  the  dis- 
tress of  the  poorer  wage  workers.  But  I  do  not  believe 
that  a  brotherhood  movement  can  develop  rehgious  sen- 
timent out  of  itself.  On  the  contrary,  the  new  birth 
alone  can  strengthen  and  fortify  the  movement."  ^  Be- 
lief in  the  necessity  and  effectiveness  of  spiritual  rebirth  is 
not  peculiar  to  revivalists  and  "orthodox"  Christians. 

'  "The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  New  York,  1902,  p.  189. 
*  Printed  in  Record  of  Christian  Work,  July,  1910,  p.  437. 


382  SOCIALISM  AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

Only  a  superficial  student  of  social  conditions  can 
doubt  that  the  chief  ailment  of  society  to-day  is  not  def- 
fective  organization  but  moral  weakness.  If  this  is  an  ac- 
curate diagnosis,  the  methods  advocated  by  Socialism  are 
nothing  better  than  a  plaster  applied  to  a  cancer  —  the 
plaster  may  alleviate  pain,  but  cannot  cure  disease. 
Jesus  says,  "Except  a  man  be  born  from  above,  he  cannot 
see  the  kingdom  of  God."  Socialism  says,  Except  so- 
ciety be  reorganized,  man  can  never  be  happy.  The 
two  sayings  do  not  contradict  each  other  —  they  are  in 
different  planes  —  but  which  is  the  prof ounder  teaching  ? 
Which  best  corresponds  to  man's  experience,  present  and 
past  ?  A  large  part  of  social  ills  proceed,  not  from  mal- 
adjustment of  social  institutions  and  forces,  or  from  the 
maladjustment  of  the  individual  to  his  environment,  but 
from  the  maladjustment  of  the  individual  to  himself  — 
in  other  words,  they  proceed  from  his  own  evil  passions, 
impulses,  character.  Moral  evil  is  not  a  theological  ab- 
straction, or  an  ethical  theory,  but  one  of  the  elemental 
facts  of  human  experience.  Socialism  has  no  place  in 
its  philosophy  or  order  for  incurable  moral  perversity. 
But  this  exists ;  it  must  be  reckoned  with ;  a  remedy 
for  it  must  be  found.  Some  socialists  would  treat  this 
perversity,  like  crime,  as  a  department  of  pathology. 
Pathology  is  all  very  well,  as  a  preliminary.  Before  a 
cure  for  typhoid  could  be  suggested  it  was  necessary  to 
learn  the  cause  of  the  disease.  But  in  every  case  the  goal 
of  medicine  is  therapeutics,  not  pathology,  and  Socialism 
has  no  moral  therapeutics.  Most  socialists  simply  ignore 
the  whole  question  —  wave  it  gracefully  aside,  like  Mr. 
Podsnap,  and  decline  to  discuss  or  even  to  recognize  the 
difficulty.     But  moral  perversit)/  has  an  uncomfortable 


THE   SOCL\L  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  383 

way  of  forcing  itself  on  the  attention  of  the  world,  and 
crime  must  either  be  cured  or  endured. 

Jesus  approaches  the  social  problem  from  within; 
SociaHsm  is  endeavoring  to  solve  it  from  without.  The 
socialist  would  transform  man's  environment,  hoping  that 
this  would  work  a  change  in  man  himself ;  Jesus  would 
transform  man,  and  leave  him  to  deal  with  his  environ- 
ment. The  method  of  Jesus  is  sound  ;  that  of  Socialism 
illusory.  But  while  the  method  of  Jesus  is  indispensa- 
ble, the  method  of  Socialism  is  not  hostile  to  it.  Social- 
ists and  Christians  are  natural  alhes,  not  necessary  op- 
ponents. The  changes  in  social  institutions  that  the 
socialist  proposes  are  a  wholly  desirable  complement  to 
the  spiritual  change  contemplated  by  Jesus.  The  king- 
dom that  Jesus  proclaimed  and  the  social  order  to  which 
the  sociahst  looks  forward  are,  so  far  as  material  condi- 
tions are  concerned,  indistinguishable.  The  liberty,  fra- 
ternity, equahty,  resulting  from  the  recognition  of 
universal  human  brotherhood,  that  is  the  ideal  of  Social- 
ism, is  also  the  ideal  of  Jesus. 

Yet  socialists  in  large  numbers  continue  to  contradict 
Jesus,  and  to  maintain  that  man  can  live  by  bread  alone. 
While  there  are  many  socialists  who  are  altruistic  and 
spiritual,  deeply  in  earnest  in  their  efforts  to  lift  up  hu- 
manity, it  is  evident  that  the  peculiar  strength  of  Social- 
ism has  not  thus  far  existed  in  these  exalted  sentiments. 
Most  socialists  are  frankly  selfish  and  materialistic.  The 
working-man  is  a  socialist,  as  a  rule,  not  for  what  he  hopes 
to  give,  but  for  what  he  hopes  to  get.  He  looks  for  a  great 
improvement  of  his  material  conditions.  He  believes 
firmly  with  Jacob  that  gain  is  godliness;  he  has  much 
need  to  learn,  with  the  apostle,  that  godliness  is  gain. 


384  SOCIALISM  AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

Socialism  tends  to  substitute  itself  for  religion,  says  En- 
rico Fern,  "since  its  aim  is  for  humanity  to  have  its  own 
'earthly  paradise'  here,  without  having  to  wait  for  it  in 
the  hereafter,  which,  to  say  the  least,  is  very  problemat- 
ical." Is  it  necessary  to  point  out  that  such  a  saying 
shows  an  entire  failure  to  comprehend  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  ?  He  desired,  he  expected,  the  coming  of  the 
''earthly  paradise"  in  this  life,  so  far  as  that  means  that 
all  men  should  share  equally  in  the  bounty  of  their 
Heavenly  Father,  but  he  differed  entirely  from  the  mod- 
ern socialist  as  to  the  path  that  would  lead  men  to  the 
desired  consummation.  "Cleanse  first  the  inside  of  the 
cup  and  platter,"  says  Jesus.  Only  polish  the  outside 
well  and  the  inside  can  take  care  of  itself,  retorts  the 
socialist.  The  problem  of  readjusting  the  social  environ- 
ment, of  recasting  social  institutions,  is  a  new  problem 
for  every  generation ;  the  problem  of  reconstituting  a 
man  is  the  same  problem  from  age  to  age. 

Materialism  is  really  incompatible  with  Socialism. 
It  is  his  materialism,  partly  enforced  on  him  by  circum- 
stances, that  is  the  laborer's  worst  foe  now.  The  deadly 
dulness,  the  benumbing  routine  of  the  working-man's  life 
in  the  present  factory  organization,  is  the  most  formidable 
obstacle  between  him  and  a  higher  life.  Mr.  Markham 
has  given  a  true,  if  terrible,  picture  of  incarnate  material- 
ism in  his  poem,  "The  Man  with  the  Hoe"  :  — 

Bowed  by  the  weight  of  centuries  he  leans 
Upon  his  hoe  and  gazes  on  the  ground. 
The  emptiness  of  ages  in  his  face, 
And  on  his  back  the  burden  of  the  world. 
Who  made  him  dead  to  rapture  and  despair, 
A  thing  that  grieves  not  and  that  never  hopes, 


THE  SOCL\L  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  385 

Stolid  and  stunned,  a  brother  to  the  ox  ? 

Is  this  the  Thing  the  Lord  God  made  and  gave 

To  have  dominion  over  sea  and  land ; 

To  trace  the  stars  and  search  the  heavens  for  power ; 

To  feel  the  passion  of  eternity  ? 

Is  this  the  Dream  he  dreamed  who  shaped  the  suns 

And  marked  their  ways  upon  the  unknown  deep  ? 

Down  all  the  stretch  of  Hell  to  its  last  gulf 

There  is  no  shape  more  terrible  than  this  — 

More  tongued  ^vith  censure  of  the  world's  blind  greed  — 

More  filled  wath  signs  and  portents  of  the  soul  — 

More  fraught  with  menace  to  the  universe. 

It  is  the  chief  praise  of  Socialism,  as  some  teach  it,  it 
is  the  hiding  of  its  power,  that  it  can  transfigure  even  such 
a  life  with  the  glory  of  a  new  hope.  But  Jesus  offers  a 
loftier  hope  than  that  of  mere  personal  betterment ;  an 
interpretation  of  life  in  terms  higher  than  the  senses ; 
a  view  of  present  duty  and  of  future  destiny  far  more  in- 
spiring than  Socialism  can  offer.  Many  socialists  are 
trj-ing  to  make  a  religion  out  of  their  philosophy,  and  the 
devotion  to  the  w^elfare  of  their  fellows  that  it  may  inspire. 
But  considered  as  a  religion,  Socialism  is  as  a  tallow  can- 
dle to  the  sun  when  compared  with  the  religion  of  Jesus. 
Such  power  as  it  has  is  derived,  not  from  the  gross  ma- 
terialism and  the  cruel  class  selfishness  of  its  programme, 
as  interpreted  by  Marx  and  Kropotkin,  but  to  the  senti- 
ments of  justice  to  all  men,  recognition  of  human  brother- 
hood, self-sacrifice  of  the  one  for  the  good  of  the  many. 
In  a  word,  the  moral  power  of  Socialism  is  due  to  elements 
borrowed  from  the  ethics  of  Jesus ;  and  the  goal  to  which 
it  looks  forward,  a  sort  of  golden  age  of  universal  equity 

2C 


o 


86  SOCIALISM  AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 


and  equality,  is  essentially  the  millennium  of  Jewish 
prophets  and  Christian  sages. 

From  our  discussion  this  conclusion  emerges  :  that  the 
social  teaching  of  Jesus  has  regard,  not  to  form  and 
mechanism,  but  to  spirit  and  aim.  Socialists  commonly 
make  too  much  of  mechanism,  of  organization,  and  not 
enough  of  spirit.  Tliere  is  a  larger  place  for  personality 
in  the  pliilosophy  of  Socialism,  and  in  its  practical  aims, 
than  many  socialists  recognize.  Here  is  where  rehgion 
and  Socialism,  different  planes,  intersect.  Socialism  as 
a  philosophy  can  find  reaHzation  in  a  social  order  only 
through  personality.  The  moral  elevation  of  the  great 
mass  of  mankind  must  go  along  with  the  establishment 
and  maintenance  of  any  form  of  collectivism.  But  while 
Jesus  has  thus  one  method  and  Socialism  another,  they 
are  neither  contradictory  nor  mutually  exclusive,  but 
rather  complementary.  As  the  bird's  two  wings  sustain 
him  in  the  air  and  propel  him  in  his  flight  towards  his 
goal,  so  these  two  methods  seem  necessary  to  the  sure  and 
stable  progress  of  society.  We  may,  therefore,  and  we 
should,  approach  the  study  of  social  problems,  not  as 
Utopian  dreamers,  but  with  a  courage  born  of  a  justified 
and  constant  optimism. 


X 


THE    SOCIAL    TEACHINGS    OF    JESUS 
APPLICATIONS 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

On  Marriage  and  Divorce  :  — 
Wright,  Report  on  Marriage  and  Divorce  in  the  United  States, 

1867-1886.     Washington,  1889. 
Report  of  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor  on  ]\Iarriage  and  Divorce  in  the 

United  States.     Washington,  1891. 
HiRSH,  Tabulated  Digest  of  the  Divorce  Laws  of  the  United  States. 

New  York,  1901. 
Howard,  History  of  Matrimonial  Institutions,  3  vols.     Chicago, 

1904.     (Contains  very  complete  bibliographies.) 
Bishop,  Commentaries  on  Marriage,  Divorce,  and  Separation,  2 

vols.     Chicago,  1891. 
LiCHTENBERGER,  Divorce :    A  Study  in  Social  Causation.    New 

York,  1909. 
Wilcox,  The  Divorce  Problem,  "Studies  in  History,  Economics, 

and  Public  Law,"  pubhshed  by  Columbia  University,  1894. 

On  Wealth :  — 
Cone,  Rich  and  Poor  in  the  New  Testament.     New  York,  1902. 
Carnegie,  The  Gospel  of  Wealth.     New  York,  1900. 
Jenks,  Great  Fortunes:    the  Winning,  the  Using,     New  York, 
1906. 

The  Liquor  Problem  :  — 
HoRSELEY  ANB  Sturge,  Alcohol  and  the  Human  Body.    New  York, 

1908. 
Barker,  The  Saloon  Problem  and  Social  Reform.    New  York, 

1905. 

War  and  Peace :  — 
General  Homer  Lea,  The  Valor  of  Ignorance.    New  York,  1909. 
General  Chittenden,  War  or  Peace?     Chicago,  191 1. 
Angell,  The  Great  lUusion.     New  York,  191 1. 
Novicow,  War  and  its  Alleged  Benefits.     New  York,  191 1, 
Addams,  New  Ideals  of  Peace.     New  York,  1907. 
Hull,  The  Two  Hague  Conferences.    Boston,  1908. 


X 


THE    SOCIAL    TEACHINGS    OF    JESUS  —  APPLICATIONS 

From  our  study  of  the  general  principles  of  his  social 
ethics,  we  have  reached  the  conclusion  that,  while  Jesus 
aimed  at  social  reform,  he  was  not  a  social  reformer. 
The  social  reformer  is  always  mainly  concerned  with 
institutions ;  Jesus  was  chiefly  concerned  with  men.  His 
mission  was  not  to  be  a  reformer  but  a  revealer  —  to 
make  God  known  to  men,  and  so  bring  men  into  right 
relations  with  God,  as  a  condition  precedent  to  right  re- 
lations with  one  another.  He  was  not  agitator  but 
prophet.  He  sought  the  betterment  of  society,  indeed, 
but  only  through  the  spiritual  upKfting  of  the  individual 
man.  He  therefore  maintained  an  attitude  of  aloofness 
and  detachment  from  some  of  the  chief  social  problems 
of  his  day,  refusing  to  be  tempted  from  the  proclamation 
of  his  spiritual  Good  News  into  the  arena  of  personal 
and  political  squabbles.  Yet  it  was  evidently  no  lack 
of  sympathy  with  the  suffering  poor  that  made  Jesus  de- 
cHne  the  role  of  a  social  reformer.  His  method  does  not 
imply  denial  of  social  wrongs,  or  minimize  their  impor- 
tance ;  it  merely  places  first  things  first,  and  emphasizes 
the  fact  that  the  direct  righting  of  social  wrongs  was  not 
his  mission.  His  method  was  one  of  indirection,  but  none 
the  less,  rather  all  the  more,  effective. 

This  method  of  Jesus  differentiates  him  from  all  other 
religious  and  ethical  teachers  and  makes  him  unique. 

389 


390  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

Other  great  teachers  of  mankind  have  inculcated  pre- 
cepts, bound  their  followers  by  moral  rules,  drawn  up 
ethical  codes,  sought  the  direct  reform  of  abuses.  That 
was  the  method  of  Confucius,  of  Moses,  of  Buddha,  the 
three  greatest  teachers  of  the  world  before  Jesus.  They 
have  left  ethical  codes  that  are  still  the  standards  of 
millions  of  the  race.  But  the  method  of  Jesus  was  other 
and  more  puissant ;  he  confined  himself  to  the  inculcating 
of  ethical  principles,  that  are  of  eternal  validity  and  of 
universal  adaptation,  principles  that  if  faithfully  applied 
and  obeyed  would  long  since  have  righted  every  social 
wrong.  The  superiority  of  the  method  is  indisputable 
and  transcendent.  It  is  the  secret  of  the  inexhaustible- 
ness  of  the  ethics  of  Jesus ;  for,  as  Romanes  appreciated, 
his  teaching  is  notable  for  what  it  did  not  contain.  There 
is  nothing  in  his  ethics  that  the  progress  of  mankind  has 
compelled  his  followers  to  surrender  or  modify.  Codes 
become  obsolete  with  lapse  of  time  and  change  of  social 
conditions ;  a  true  principle  is  always  true.  It  is  this 
characteristic  of  Christianity,  more  than  any  other,  that 
fits  it  to  be  a  world  religion,  beyond  any  of  its  rivals. 
Even  when  Jesus  seems  to  depart  from  this  method,  and 
to  lay  down  hard-and-fast  rules  of  conduct,  the  departure 
is  only  a  seeming  one,  and  the  rules  are  not  rules.  What 
he  really  does  is  to  give  occasional  illustration  of  the  way 
in  which  the  primordial  law  of  love  is  applicable  to  the 
complex  details  of  a  social  relationship. 

And  let  us  remind  ourselves  again  that  the  social  ethics 
of  Jesus  are  the  very  substance  of  his  teaching,  not  an 
excrescence.  Though  he  lived  at  times  on  the  heights 
and  in  the  silences,  alone  with  God,  for  the  most  part  he 
was  a  man  among  men.     No  visionary  dreamer  he,  but 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  391 

a  man  who  had  a  passion  for  truth  and  reahty,  for  the 
practical  and  possible.  Not  in  the  least  austere  or  harsh, 
his  nature  was  attuned  to  the  finite  as  to  the  infinite, 
and  in  the  presence  of  human  need  was  vibrant  with 
sympathy.  The  common  people  among  whom  he  moved, 
simple-minded,  easily  receiving  his  Good  News,  were  the 
"Httle  ones"  whom  it  was  the  greatest  of  sins  to  cause  to 
stumble.  To  the  outcast  and  lost  he  brought  a  message 
of  hope  and  rescue.  He  seemed  peculiarly  drawn  to 
those  whom  the  good  society  of  his  day  had  placed  under 
its  ban ;  and  so,  it  was  exaggeration,  but  not  slander, 
when  his  enemies  represented  him  as  the  friend  of  pub- 
licans and  sinners.  Exaggeration,  because  he  sought  no 
one  class  of  men,  invited  no  favored  few  to  enter  God's 
kingdom.  He  might  be  said  to  have  begun  his  mission 
by  preaching  to  the  better  classes,  the  regular  attendants 
on  the  synagogue  worship  —  if  not  actually  Pharisees, 
well  disposed  towards  Phariseeism.  But  he  was  not  con- 
tent with  this,  and  deliberately  went  to  the  outcasts  with 
an  assurance  that  it  was  possible  for  them  to  amend  their 
lives  and  become  members  of  the  kingdom.  He  does  not 
seem  to  have  made  any  permanent  impression  on  this 
class,  though  he  gained  certain  individuals  from  among 
them ;  but  by  such  social  ethics  he  estranged  the  culti- 
vated and  the  well-to-do.  As  a  result,  all  but  a  select  few 
from  both  strata  of  society  rejected  both  him  and  his 
teachings. 


The  social  unit  is  the  family,  not  the  individual  —  you 
must  have  two  persons  before  you  can  have  a  society. 
The  ethical  ideas  of  Jesus  were  cast  in  the  mould  of  tlic 


392  SOCIALISM  AND   THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

family,  and  were  obviously  colored  by  his  personal  ex- 
perience. He  spent  the  greater  part  of  his  life  as  a  mem- 
ber of  a  Jewish  family,  participant  to  the  full  in  its  domes- 
tic life.  Though  himself  a  celibate,  he  was  no  ascetic. 
His  ethical  generalizations  are  based  on  the  particulars  of 
such  experience.  Love  of  man  must  ever  begin  in  love 
of  men.  Even  the  kingdom,  as  Jesus  conceives  it,  is  the 
family  of  God  —  God  himself  Father  and  Protector  of  all, 
and  all  the  world  brothers  and  sisters  because  of  their 
relationship  to  God.  Therefore  the  practical  ethics  of 
Jesus  are  the  ethics  of  the  family  life  enlarged  —  as  broth- 
ers and  sisters  the  whole  world  are  to  live  together  in 
peace  and  mutual  helpfulness,  conscious  of  a  common 
interest,  and  fully  aware  that  the  welfare  of  one  is  the 
welfare  of  all.  Selfishness  is  excluded,  because  it  is  de- 
structive of  family  hfe,  which  demands  unity,  and  there- 
fore the  constant  voluntary  sacrifice  of  the  individual 
for  the  common  good. 

The  family  rests  on  the  institution  of  marriage;  for 
scientific  research  has  assured  us  that  no  considerable 
progress  beyond  barbarism  v/as  made  until  the  family 
was  evolved.  The  ultimate  basis  of  the  family  is  even 
more  physiological  than  social.  The  young  of  the  lower 
animals  gain  their  growth  in  a  few  weeks  or  months,  with 
few  exceptions,  and  are  then  able  to  care  for  themselves. 
A  permanent  family  is  of  no  use  in  the  perpetuation  of 
such  races,  and  therefore  has  never  developed.  But  the 
human  young  require  many  years  for  their  growth  to  a 
self-supporting  age,  and  while  it  is  not  possible  to  fix 
any  exact  time  when  the  boy  passes  into  the  man  or  the 
girl  becomes  a  woman,  the  arbitrary  rule  of  the  civil  law 
that  manhood  begins  on  the  twenty-first  birthday  and 


THE   SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  393 

womanhood  on  the  eighteenth,  is  near  enough  to  physio- 
logical facts  for  practical  purposes.  It  is  to  insure  the 
protection  of  children  until  they  thus  become  men  and 
women,  and  so  to  perpetuate  the  race,  that  the  family 
was  first  instituted  or  developed,  and  this  is  still  its  chief 
social  function. 

The  teaching  of  Jesus  regarding  marriage  is,  therefore, 
his  most  weighty  and  important  social  teaching.  His 
doctrine  is  comprised  in  few  words,  but  it  lacks  nothing 
in  either  clearness  or  emphasis.  In  his  view,  marriage 
is  a  divine  institution  —  God,  and  not  merely  social 
custom,  or  civil  law,  joins  man  and  woman  in  wedlock. 
It  is  not,  therefore,  a  contract  that  may  be  made  and 
terminated  at  the  mere  will  of  the  parties  concerned. 
The  civil  law  recognizes  that  marriage  differs  from  com- 
mercial contracts,  in  that  it  establishes  a  status,  in  which 
the  rights  of  children  and  the  interests  of  society  at  large 
are  involved  ;  and  that  such  a  unique  contract  cannot  be 
terminated  at  will  like  other  contracts.  In  no  way  in- 
terfering with  or  contradicting  this  principle,  Jesus  places 
marriage  on  a  wholly  different  plane,  and  a  far  higher. 
It  is  here  that  the  Roman  Cathohc  Church  finds  its  best 
justification  for  regarding  marriage  as  a  sacrament ;  and 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  indeed  falls  Kttle  short  of  this,  for 
the  difference  between  a  divine  institution  and  a  sacred 
ordinance  is  hardly  greater  than  that  between  tweedledee 
and  tweedledum. 

The  second  teaching  of  Jesus  regarding  marriage  is  that 
the  institution  is  rooted  in  human  nature,  "male  and 
female  created  he  them."  It  is  not  a  concession  to  the 
weakness  of  the  flesh,  as  the  early  Fathers  taught,  but 
results  from  the  very  constitution  of  man.     The  differ- 


394  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

ence  of  sex  is  primary,  and  it  is  not  merely  a  physical 
difference,  it  is  an  intellectual  and  ethical  difference  as 
well ;  and  it  is  this  fact  that  makes  marriage,  in  any  true 
sense,  possible.  For  if  the  union  of  men  and  women  were 
no  different  from  the  unions  of  the  lower  animals,  it  would 
not  be  worthy  to  be  called  marriage.  No  man  knows, 
feels,  or  wills  precisely  like  a  woman,  and  it  is  these  spir- 
itual unlikenesses  that  condition  marriage  and  give  to  it 
both  its  charm  and  its  value.  It  is  doubtless  true  that 
the  ethical  in  marriage  is  linked  to  the  physical,  but  the 
physical  ought  to  be  transfused  and  transfigured  by  the 
ethical. 

Marriage  thus  has  its  foundation  in  the  most  imperious 
of  natural  propensities,  the  desire  of  every  normal  man 
or  woman  for  the  complement  of  self,  the  "affinity"  to 
which  each  is  irresistibly  drawn.  We  may  comprehend, 
though  we  cannot  approve,  the  tendency  of  the  early 
Church  to  condemn  as  essentially  sinful  a  propensity  in 
man  which  was  the  cause  of  so  much  unethical  conduct 
in  heathen  society,  in  such  condemnation  losing  sight  of 
the  distinction  between  the  normal  and  lawful  and  the  ab- 
normal and  lawless  satisfaction  of  all  human  desires.  And 
because  of  this  error,  the  Catholic  Church  came  to  exalt 
virginity  above  marriage  as  the  state  most  pleasing  to  God 
and  most  conducive  to  all  virtue.  But  the  Church  in  gen- 
eral has  seen  with  clearer  vision  the  truth  taught  by  Jesus, 
that  the  natural  desire  of  men  and  women  for  each  other  is 
an  integral  factor  of  human  nature,  implanted  in  the  hu- 
man constitution  by  the  Creator ;  and  that  marriage  was 
from  the  beginning  intended  to  be  the  field  for  the  satisfac- 
tion and  exercise  of  God-given  faculties.  It  is  the  plain 
teaching  of  history  that  when  marriage  has  been  forbid- 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  395 

den  in  the  name  of  religion,  this  negation  of  the  facts  of 
man's  constitution  has  inevitably  been  futile,  and  has  in- 
evitably resulted  in  frightful  immoralities.  Jesus  did  not 
forbid  marriage,  nor  did  he  recognize  any  higher  state. 
He  himself  lived  the  celibate  Hfe,  and  he  recognized  that 
exceptional  men  may  be  divinely  appointed  to  the  celibate 
life  for  the  sake  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  But  marriage 
is  the  normal  state  for  men  and  women ;  celibacy  is  the 
exceptional,  and  so  far  abnormal. 

The  only  bond  of  marriage  recognized  by  Jesus  is  the 
mutual  love  of  one  man  for  one  woman  —  a  love  so  dom- 
inant as  to  override  that  relation  otherwise  most  sacred, 
the  one  human  relation  sanctioned  in  the  Decalogue  and 
also  accompanied  by  a  promise.  Beyond  and  above  the 
obhgation  to  honor  father  and  mother  is  the  obligation 
created  by  sexual  love,  finding  its  fruition  in  marriage : 
"For  this  cause  shall  a  man  leave  his  father  and  mother, 
and  shall  cleave  unto  his  wife."  It  is  almost  a  profana- 
tion of  love  even  to  discuss  the  question  of  monogamy 
versus  polygamy.  Luther,  in  a  great  crisis  of  his  life, 
taught  that  since  polygamy  was  permitted  to  the  pa- 
triarchs, and  is  not  explicitly  forbidden  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, it  could  not  be  inherently  wrong,  and  might,  there- 
fore, be  permitted  to  princes,  lest  they  commit  a  worse 
sin,  but  even  then  under  the  bond  of  secrecy.  His  in- 
sistence on  secrecy  is  a  clear  proof  that  his  argument  did 
not  satisfy  his  conscience,  and  that  he  was  deliberately 
conniving  at  what  he  knew  to  be  an  ethical  wrong.  Jesus 
did  not  explicitly  forbid  polygamy,  it  is  true,  because  he 
had  no  occasion  to  do  so,  as  it  was  not  practised  in  his 
day,  either  among  the  Jews  or  the  pagans  in  the  Roman 
Empire.     But  he  did   exclude   the  very  possibility  of 


396  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

polygamy  by  confining  his  language  to  one  man  and  one 
woman,  and  by  describing  a  union  that  is  impossible 
between  one  man  and  two  women,  "so  that  the  two  shall 
become  one  flesh." 

After  his  usual  manner,  Jesus  does  not  go  into  the  de- 
tails of  the  ethics  of  matrimony,  but  leaves  his  followers 
to  deduce  for  themselves  the  ethical  details  from  the  gen- 
eral principle  that  mutual  love  is  the  bond  of  union  be- 
tween every  married  pair.  The  principle  of  mutuality  is 
fundamental.  Each  party  to  the  relation  surrenders  a 
portion  of  the  hitherto  complete  and  independent  per- 
sonality, for  on  no  other  terms  can  the  two  become  one. 
If  only  one  yields,  while  the  other  preserves  full  individu- 
ahty,  the  result  is  a  state  of  servitude,  not  of  marriage. 
Jesus  evidently  presupposes  something  other  and  higher 
than  mere  physical  attraction :  the  spiritual  unity,  the 
love  that  is  beyond  and  above  the  somatic  magnetism 
of  each  sex  for  its  opposite,  gives  marriage  most  of  its 
value  and  all  of  its  dignity.  Marriage  that  is  founded 
on  nothing  more  than  sensuous  charm  cannot  rationally 
be  expected  to  endure  after  passion  cools  and  beauty 
fades ;  but  a  marriage  that  is  founded  on  mental  and 
moral  affinities,  a  choice  of  mates  dictated  by  reciprocal 
perception  and  valuation  of  character,  each  expecting 
and  hoping  to  give  the  other  more  than  is  received,  to 
find  happiness  in  making  the  happiness  of  the  beloved, 
''will  begin  with  the  glory  of  the  dawn  and  have  shed 
over  its  last  years  the  softened  radiance  of  the  afterglow." 
There  is  no  painful  disillusion,  no  sickening  disgust,  no 
deadly  boredom  and  final  despair  in  such  unions.  They 
never  end  in  the  divorce  court.  The  death  of  passion  and 
the  inevitable  fading  of  beauty  are  often  the  beginning  of 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  397 

the  truest  love  —  of  self-forgetfulness,  self-control,  self- 
sacrifice,  which  overleap  such  barriers  as  differences  of 
temperament,  culture,  and  habit,  and  gradually  draw 
husband  and  wife  together  into  most  intimate  and  in- 
destructible union.  And  this  occurs  the  more  surely, 
if  the  earthly  love  is  rooted  in  the  heavenly.  Faith  in 
the  eternally  true  God  of  love  makes  the  human  love  a 
symbol  of  its  power  and  glory. 

n 

Though  he  usually  avoided  decision  of  specific  ethical 
problems,  there  was  a  question  on  which  Jesus  did  not 
decline  to  speak,  namel}-,  the  question  of  divorce ;  and 
we  are  carefully  informed  that  his  teaching  astonished 
the  people.  This  part  of  his  social  ethics  is  of  special 
interest  to  all  who  are  concerned  about  the  well-being 
of  society,  for  cheap  and  easy  divorce  is  as  rife  among  us 
as  it  could  have  been  among  the  Jews  in  the  first  century. 
The  state  of  legal  confusion  that  now  obtains  in  the 
United  States  is  partly  the  result  and  partly  the  cause  of 
ethical  uncertainty  and  social  degeneration ;  and  if  not 
soon  checked,  promises  soon  to  issue  in  social  anarchy. 

The  teaching  of  Jesus  is  found  in  the  following  passages  : 
Matt.  5:32,  19  :  3-9  ;  Mark  10 :  2-12  ;  Luke  16  :  18,  and 
is  accepted  by  nearly  all  critics  as  part  of  his  undoubted 
words.  But  from  very  ancient  times  there  has  been  di- 
vision as  to  the  proper  interpretation  of  these  words. 
Thp  majority  of  interpreters,  including  most  of  the  Greek 
and  Latin  Fathers  and  those  who  to-day  call  themselves 
Catholics,  whether  Greek,  Roman,  or  Anglican,  agree 
that  Jesus  forbids  all  divorce  from  the  bond  of  matrimony, 
for  any  cause  whatsoever.     On  the  other  hand^  the  ma- 


398  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

jority  of  Protestant  exegetes  during  the  last  four  centuries, 
and  a  minority  of  the  earher  Fathers,  insist  that  Jesus 
permits  divorce  from  the  bond  of  marriage  for  adultery, 
but  for  no  other  cause.  Here  is  an  apparently  irrecon- 
cilable conflict  of  opinion.  Nevertheless,  agreement  is 
not  impossible,  for  the  Catholic  exegesis  has  never  been 
pronounced  de  fide,  and  the  fallibility  of  all  human  opin- 
ion is  part  of  the  Protestant  creed. 

This  is  one  of  those  rare  cases  in  which  both  disputants 
seem  to  be  wrong,  because  a  common  error  underlies  the 
exegesis  of  both  parties.  Catholic  and  Protestant  alike 
have  neglected  the  fundamental  principle  of  exegesis : 
mere  words  mean  nothing.  B  ef  ore  we  can  interpret  words, 
we  must  ask,  Who  speaks  ?  To  whom  ?  For  what  pur- 
pose ?  If  these  questions  had  been  asked  and  candidly 
answered,  there  must  have  been  agreement  in  the  exe- 
gesis. 

The  most  elaborate  teaching  of  Jesus  on  the  subject  was 
delivered  in  response  to  the  testing  questions  of  the  Phari- 
sees. It  was  teaching  given  to  Jews,  living  under  the 
law  of  Moses,  as  modified  by  the  later  rabbinic  teaching. 
The  practice  concerning  which  the  men  of  that  day  were 
in  doubt,  and  concerning  which  Jesus  was  questioned, 
was  divorce  for  trivial  causes :  "Is  it  lawful  for  a  man  to 
put  away  his  wife  for  every  cause  ?  "  Divorce  on  various 
pretexts  seems  to  have  been  prevalent  at  an  early  date 
among  the  Jews ;  and,  it  being  impracticable  to  reform  it 
altogether,  it  was  ordained  in  the  Mosaic  code  that  a  man 
who  put  away  his  wife  should  give  her  a  writing,  stating 
his  reason  for  so  doing.  This  was  for  the  protection  of 
the  woman,  and  was  intended  to  discourage  divorce  ex- 
cept for  strong  reasons.     And  even  this,  as  Jesus  said, 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  399 

was  because  of  the  hardness  of  heart  of  the  Jewish  people, 
who  were  not  ready  for  a  stricter  law.  But  Jesus  goes 
back  of  the  law  of  Deuteronomy  to  the  older  tradition  of 
Genesis.  The  time  has  now  come  (he  says,  in  ejEfect)  for 
a  return  to  the  original  law  of  marriage ;  the  primal  in- 
stitution is  to  be  reenacted.  Any  man  who  henceforth 
puts  away  his  wife,  as  allowed  by  the  Law  and  the  rules 
of  the  Rabbis,  really  violates  the  law  of  God ;  and  if  he 
takes  another  wife,  he  commits  adultery,  as  does  he  also 
who  marries  the  wife  so  put  away.^  Marriage  is  of  God ; 
it  is  a  sacred  union ;  and  what  God  has  joined  together 
let  not  man  put  asunder. 

The  other  passages  are  to  be  understood  in  a  similar 
manner;  they  contemplate  the  same  state  of  affairs. 
They  also  are  spoken  to  Jews,  and  are  directed  against 
the  evil  that  actually  prevailed  among  them  —  the  same 
evil  precisely  from  which  we  are  suffering  to-day  —  di- 
vorce for  trivial  causes.  Such  divorce  Jesus  forbade  for 
all  time,  and  to  his  loyal  followers  that  prohibition  will 
be  final  authority.  He  permits  neither  contemporaneous 
nor  consecutive  polygamy.  He  will  not  listen  to  the 
argument,  so  dear  to  many  modern  apologists  for  divorce, 
that  the  way  to  make  marriage  more  sacred  is  to  make  it 
less  binding.  Not  more  sexual  liberty,  but  less,  was  his 
teaching.  He  gives  no  encouragement  to  recent  teachers, 
who  declare  that  divorce  is  a  symptom  of  social  health, 
not  of  disease ;  and  that  the  cure  is  to  be  found,  not  so 
much  in  stricter  laws  about  divorce,  as  in  safeguarding 

*  If  the  words  "saving  for  the  cause  of  fornication"  are  a  part  of  the 
words  spoken  by  Jesus,  and  not  a  later  interpolation,  the  reference  is 
evidently  to  prematrimonial  unchastity.  Compare  Deut.  24:  i,  with 
22 :  14-21. 


400  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

marriage.  Let  us  safeguard  marriage,  by  all  means,  and 
if  possible,  make  divorce  unnecessary,  but  let  us  by  no 
means  make  the  fatal  error  of  mistaking  a  disease  for  a 
cure. 

Jesus  did  not  say  one  word  —  not  one  word,  at  least, 
that  has  been  recorded  —  on  the  subject  of  divorce  for 
that  sin  whose  very  commission  dissolves  the  bond  of 
matrimony,  and  makes  twain  again  of  those  who  had 
become  one  flesh.  There  was  no  reason  why  he  should 
teach  anything  on  that  subject ;  there  was  every  reason 
why  he  should  not.  There  was  no  such  thing  under  the 
Mosaic  law  as  divorce  for  adultery ;  the  penalty  for  that 
sin  was  death,  as  every  Jew  was  aware.  Jesus  had  no 
need  to  say  that  the  man  wronged  by  his  partner's  un- 
faithfulness was  freed  from  the  bond  of  m.arriage  and  could 
marry  again ;  that  was  a  matter  of  course,  for  the  man  was 
promptly  freed  from  the  bond  of  marriage  by  the  death 
of  the  guilty  one.  The  teaching  of  Jesus  does  not  permit 
divorce  for  adultery,  and  the  Protestant  exegesis  is  wrong 
in  maintaining  that  it  does.  The  teaching  of  Jesus  does 
not  forbid  divorce  for  adultery,  and  the  Catholic  exegesis 
is  wrong  to  maintain  that  it  does.  The  teaching  of  Jesus 
has  no  relation  to  the  subject ;  that  was  a  matter  settled 
by  the  Mosaic  law,  which  Jesus  did  not  undertake  to 
modify,  and  which  he  had  no  occasion  to  discuss.  What 
he  forbids  is,  divorce  for  trivial  causes. 

It  has  been  objected  to  this  interpretation  of  the  words 
of  Jesus,  that  the  death  penalty  was  no  longer  enforced 
for  adultery  in  the  time  of  Christ.  That  is  pure  assump- 
tion, and  no  proof  of  such  alleged  fact  is  forthcoming. 
The  famous  pericope  of  John  7  :  53-8 :  1 1  is  not  easily 
reconcilable  with  the  notion  that  adultery  was  no  longer 


THE  SOCLA.L  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  401 

punished  with  death.  It  is  true  that  this  passage  is  an 
interpolation  in  the  fourth  gospel,  but  it  is  generally 
believed  to  be  an  authentic  apostolic  tradition  —  indeed, 
it  authenticates  itself. 

But  the  question  that  Jesus  had  no  occasion  to  discuss 
is  the  very  question  that  we  have  urgent  need  to  discuss ; 
for  a  change  in  modern  jurisprudence  has  put  us  in  a 
different  condition  from  that  of  the  Jews,  and  the  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  is  not  exactly  applicable  to  our  situation. 
His  principle  is  clear,  and  still  valid  if  he  is  an  authorita- 
tive ethical  teacher ;  but  we  must  go  beyond  his  teaching. 
Neither  the  Old  Testament  nor  the  New  gives  any  help 
for  the  solution  of  our  problem :  Is  divorce  permissible 
for  marital  unfaithfulness,  now  that  the  adulterer  is  per- 
mitted to  live,  instead  of  being  put  to  death?  We  are 
left  to  be  guided  in  this  matter  by  general  ethical  prin- 
ciples, and  by  the  teaching  of  experience.  Does  experi- 
ence confirm  the  idea  that  absolute  refusal  of  legal 
separation  is  promotive  of  social  morality  ?  Our  own  ethi- 
cal state  is  bad  enough,  but  are  we  really  in  worse  case 
than  those  countries  in  which  the  Catholic  rule  prevails 
and  divorce  is  not  granted  for  any  cause  ?  Since  legis- 
latures will  never  again  be  persuaded  to  make  death  the 
penalty  for  offences  against  the  bond  of  marriage,  to  for- 
bid the  severance  of  the  bond  is  to  add  to  the  command 
of  Jesus  a  prohibition  of  which  he  never  dreamed,  —  one 
that  would  have  seemed  as  monstrous  to  his  generation 
as  it  does  to  ours.  For  to  offer  a  premium  on  infidelity, 
by  not  only  sparing  the  guilty  one's  life,  but  compelling 
the  innocent  victim  to  bear  the  penalty,  is  a  proposition 
shockingly  unjust  and  opposed  to  the  practice  of  the  vast 
majority  of  mankind, 
2  D 


402  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

These  ethics  of  Jesus  are  severe,  but  not  too  severe. 
They  set  up  a  standard  for  his  kingdom  no  higher  than  is 
demanded  by  his  fundamental  law  of  love.  This  is  how- 
men  and  women  ought  to  behave  to  each  other,  if  they 
recognize  the  altruistic  spirit  as  that  which  should  govern 
their  lives.  If  it  is  easier  to  be  divorced  than  to  exercise 
the  graces  of  tenderness,  consideration,  and  forbearance, 
why  should  the  married  greatly  concern  themselves  about 
their  conduct  within  the  bond  of  matrimony?  But  if 
they  understand  that  divorce  is  normally  impossible, 
there  results  the  greatest  stimulus  to  the  cultivation  of  all 
the  arts  and  graces  that  can  sweeten  human  intercourse 
and  make  the  hard  places  of  life  more  tolerable,  if  not 
actually  easy.  In  other  words,  cheap  and  easy  divorce 
is  the  offering  of  a  strong  inducement  to  marital  careless- 
ness, brutality,  and  infidelity.  It  makes  the  problem  of 
how  to  be  happy  though  married  almost  insoluble. 

The  ethics  of  Jesus  do  not  recognize  any  difference  of 
sex,  in  the  matter  of  violated  law  and  penalty.  From  his 
teaching  but  one  conclusion  can  be  drawn,  namely,  that 
all  impurity  is  sin,  that  man  or  woman  who  breaks  the 
marriage  vow  is  equally  guilty.  There  is  one  holy  law 
in  his  kingdom  for  all.  Nevertheless,  on  other  grounds 
than  his  explicit  teaching  it  may  be  maintained  that  the 
world  is  right  in  affixing  the  heavier  penalty  to  woman's 
offence.  The  moral  guilt  of  the  sexes  is  equal ;  the  social 
guilt  of  woman  is  greater  than  man's.  In  view  of  the 
more  serious  social  consequences,  society  is  ethically  jus- 
tified in  regarding  the  impurity  of  a  married  woman  as 
the  greatest  of  social  offences,  to  be  punished  by  a  social 
ostracism  that  is  much  more  terrible  than  any  legal  pen- 
alty.    It  is  not  without  reason  that  the  unfaithful  wife 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  403 

receives  the  full  measure  of  contempt,  not  merely  from 
men,  but  even  more  from  her  own  sex. 

Ill 

The  worth  of  the  ethical  teaching  of  Jesus  is  witnessed 
by  the  singular  persistence  of  his  ideals  of  character  and 
conduct.  What  is  true  of  the  relations  of  husband  and 
wife  is  true  of  all  the  family  relations,  for  which  he  pro- 
vides no  specific  instruction  beyond  his  universal  law  of 
love.  The  family,  as  he  conceived  it,  is  only  the  kingdom 
of  God  in  miniature.  It  is  "  the  world's  first  and  greatest 
venture  in  altruism."  ^  The  varied  relations  of  parent 
to  child,  of  brothers  and  sisters,  are  founded  on  mutual 
love,  unselfish  good  will,  gi^dng  itself  freely,  without  cal- 
culation or  stint.  The  family  cannot  exist,  unless  its 
members  are  constantly  asking  themselves,  not  what 
they  can  get  out  of  it,  but  what  they  can  put  into  it. 

The  evils  that  menace  the  family,  and  especially  the 
modern  divorce  problem,  have  not  yet  been  scientifically 
studied.  We  do  not  accurately  know  the  economic  and 
ethical  facts  that  are  at  the  basis  of  certain  observed  phe- 
nomena, and  until  we  do  know  the  facts  every  attempt 
to  apply  a  remedy  deserves  the  jibe  that  Voltaire  aimed 
at  medicine  :  the  art,  as  he  said,  of  putting  drugs  of  which 
we  know  little  into  bodies  of  which  we  know  less,  to  cure 
diseases  of  which  we  know  nothing  at  all.  But  it  is 
definitely  known  that  many  of  the  dangers  that  menace 

'  Peabody,  "The  Approach  to  the  Social  Question,"  p.  149.  This 
book  and  its  companion,  "Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question,"  abound 
in  suggestion  and  stimulus,  and  one  willingly  acknowledges  an  obligation 
to  Professor  Peabody  that  cannot  be  adequately  discharged  by  quotation 
marks  or  footnotes. 


404  SOCIALISM  AND   THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

the  family  grow  out  of  the  negation  of  love.  The  increase 
of  divorces  is  a  symptom  of  a  deep-seated  ethical  evil, 
a  perverted  ideal  of  life,  in  that  men  and  women  have 
come  to  seek  personal  happiness  first  of  all,  not  the  happi- 
ness of  those  with  whom  they  are  bound  in  the  family 
relation.  The  pursuit  of  happiness  is  the  most  illusory 
of  occupations.  Happiness  is  a  by-product,  and  to  seek  it 
directly  is  to  lose  it  altogether.  "Happiness"  has  come 
to  mean  to  many  people  the  unrestrained  gratification  of 
every  impulse.  Every  inability  to  gratify  desire  tends 
to  the  unhappiness  of  such,  more  or  less,  according  to  the 
strength  of  the  desire.  But  in  that  sense  happiness  is 
impossible  to  any  living  being,  in  any  conceivable  social 
state,  rich  or  poor,  high  or  low,  married  or  single. 

Real  happiness  can  be  found  only  in  the  voluntary 
limiting  of  desire.  The  reason  why  so  many  families  are 
unhappy  is  that  the  members  will  not  see  that  the  family 
life  is  a  constant  discipline  in  self-conquest,  in  gentleness, 
consideration  of  another,  patience,  and  that  true  happi- 
ness is  found  in  the  encouragement  and  growth  of  these 
virtues.  The  permanence  of  the  family  institution  pro- 
motes the  peaceable  adjustment  of  those  numerous  differ- 
ences, inevitable  between  any  two  or  more  persons,  which 
would  easily  give  rise  to  separation  if  severance  were 
easily  possible.  Families  are  unhappy  and  disrupted, 
because,  instead  of  being  "tied  up  in  the  bundle  of  love," 
they  find  themselves  tied  up  in  the  bundle  of  selfishness, 
which  soon  gives  place  to  hate.  In  the  family  it  is  es- 
pecially true  that  one  must  lose  his  fife  to  find  it,  that  one 
can  become  greatest  only  by  being  servant  of  all.  Chil- 
dren are  reared  to-day  to  expect  happiness  above  all 
things,  to  seek  it  as  the  best  thing  life  can  give,  to  expect 


THE   SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  405 

everything,  to  give  nothing.  What  wonder  that  such 
children,  when  they  come  to  estabhsh  famihes,  make  a 
ghastly  failure  of  it !  The  law  of  love,  as  appHed  to  the 
family,  demands  clear  recognition  of  the  obhgations  that 
arise  from  the  family  relationships,  and  a  ceaseless  dis- 
cipline of  the  will,  until  the  habit  is  formed  of  respecting 
those  obligations  in  the  minutest  incidents  of  family 
Intercourse. 

The  teaching  of  Jesus  and  the  teaching  of  the  primi- 
tive Christians  efiected  a  vast  and  thus  far  permanent 
change  in  family  life.  It  has  been  purified  and  sweetened 
to  such  a  degree  that  one  of  the  most  effective  agencies 
of  evangehzation  in  foreign  missions  is  the  object  lesson 
furnished  to  the  heathen  by  a  Christian  family.  So  long 
as  the  teaching  of  Jesus  has  among  his  professed  disciples 
that  real  authority  which  issues  in  obedience,  the  family 
is  in  no  serious  danger.  But  the  tendency  to  extreme  in- 
dividualism, on  the  one  hand,  and  extrem.e  sociaHzation 
on  the  other,  constitute  dangers  that  should  be  recognized. 
Communism  and  the  family  life  seem  essentially  incom- 
patible, but  not  Socialism  and  the  family.  Inasmuch  as 
Socialism  lays  special  stress  on  altruism  as  opposed  to 
selfishness,  on  the  interests  of  society  and  not  on  the 
whims  of  the  individual,  it  is  fitted  to  increase  the  stabihty 
of  the  family  relations.  It  is  true  that  a  certain  school 
of  Germ.an  pseudo-scientific  socialists  hold  that  the  fam- 
ily is  inconsistent  with  Socialism,  but  this  is  chiefly  be- 
cause they  hold  a  theory  that  the  present  property  in- 
stitutions grew  out  of  the  family  and  arc  bound  up  with 
it.  But  other  socialists  accept  neither  the  premise  nor 
the  conclusion. 

It  has  been  urged  by  some  that  the  teachings  of  Jesus 


406  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

are  really  unfavorable  to  the  perpetuation  of  the  family. 
"If  any  one  comes  to  me,  and  hates  not  his  own  father, 
and  mother,  and  wife,  and  children,  and  brothers,  and 
sisters,  and  what  is  more,  his  own  life,  he  cannot  be  my 
disciple."^  This  is  of  course  a  "hard  saying"  for  the 
literalist,  but  for  nobody  else.  Evidently,  when  Jesus 
counsels  a  man  to  "hate"  his  own  hfe,  he  is  not  advising 
suicide.  And  it  is  equally  evident  that  when  he  says  a 
man  must  "hate"  his  whole  family,  he  does  not  mean  the 
destruction  of  the  family.  He  uses  the  word  "hate,"  as 
it  is  usually  found  in  the  Scriptures,  as  the  antithesis 
of ' '  love  " ;  not  a  passion  of  resentment,  not  a  bitter  feeling. 
Such  passion  he  teaches  his  disciples  to  regard  as  virtual 
murder.^  "Hate"  is  a  principle  of  action,  that  profound 
moral  recoil  which  goodness  experiences  whenever  it  is 
brought  into  contact  with  evil,  the  feehng  of  loathing 
that  comes  over  an  ethically  normal  nature  when  con- 
fronted with  moral  vileness.  Every  man  who  has  heard 
or  seen  evil  that  has  filled  him  with  horror  or  disgust,  so 
that  he  has  shrunk  from  even  the  thought  of  it,  knows 
what  this  sort  of  "hate"  is.  It  is  perfectly  compatible 
with  love,  with  pity  for  the  evil-doer,  and  a  desire  to 
rescue  him  from  unrighteousness.  It  is  "that  chastity 
of  honor,"  as  Burke  so  finely  says,  "that  feels  a  stain  like 
a  wound." 

And  what  Jesus  commands,  therefore,  is  simply  this  : 
whenever  the  family  relations,  though  the  most  sacred 
thing  on  earth,  come  between  a  man  and  his  loyalty  to 
Jesus  and  his  teaching,  they  cease  to  be  the  chief  good  of 
life  and  become  a  snare  to  the  soul,  a  lure  to  evil,  some- 

^  Liike  14  :  26. 

■  Matt.  5  :  22 ;  cf.  i  John  3  :  15. 


THE   SOCIAL  TEACHINGS   OF  JESUS  407 

thing  that  must  be  renounced  and  forsaken,  a  thing  to 
be  avoided  like  contagion  by  a  man  who  has  learned  from 
Jesus  what  the  love  of  God  and  man  means.  God  must 
have  all  of  a  man's  allegiance  or  none.  And  it  is  a  matter 
of  history,  of  observation,  that  the  disciples  of  Jesus  are 
sometimes  compelled  to  make  this  choice  —  to  be  faithful 
to  liim  they  must  forsake  father  and  mother,  wife  and 
child,  property  and  prospects.  And  many  have  done  it. 
But  it  is  only  when  this  last  cruel  necessity  of  choice  be- 
tween family  and  Jesus  is  pressed  upon  him  that  a  man 
is  to  "hate"  his  family;  normally,  a  man  can  choose 
Jesus  and  keep  to  his  family. 

IV 

Jesus  has  been  claimed  as  the  first  socialist,  the  first 
spiritualist,  the  first  Christian  scientist,  and  so  on.  But 
the  fact  that  emerges  clearly  from  a  careful  study  of  his 
teachings  is  that  he  was  no  "ist"  and  taught  no  "ism." 
There  are  points  of  contact,  real  or  apparent,  between  his 
precepts  and  many  "isms,"  but  his  teaching  was  too 
broad  and  comprehensive  to  be  circumscribed  by  any  sect 
or  party.  Others  have  gone  to  an  opposite  extreme,  and 
since  they  could  not  find  a  point  of  contact  between  their 
fad  and  the  doctrine  of  Jesus,  have  denounced  him  because 
he  did  not  sufiiciently  denounce  social  evils  and  champion 
reform.  Jesus  was  too  sane  to  be  a  reformer.  Every 
great  reformer  has  been  more  or  less  a  lunatic;  for  to 
succeed  as  leader  of  a  reform  movement  a  man  must  be 
obsessed  by  one  idea  so  that  he  can  see,  think,  speak 
nothing  else.  He  becomes  utterly  incapable  of  seeing 
truth  as  a  sphere ;  it  presents  itself  to  him  as  a  sharp 
sword,  whose  keen  edge  is  fitted  only  for  the  destruction  of 


408  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

evil.  His  passionate  desire  for  the  righting  of  the  one 
wrong  prevents  him  from  seeing  social  facts  in  their  true 
relations.  He  is  useful  and  prevails,  precisely  in  propor- 
tion to  his  narrowness ;  but  he  is  not  a  safe  ethical  teacher. 
Jesus  did  not  abstain  from  the  career  of  a  reformer 
because  there  were  no  great  social  evils  in  his  day.  On 
the  contrary,  there  was  one  that  has  no  equal  in  modern 
times,  the  institution  of  slavery,  universal  in  the  Roman 
Empire,  and  affecting  every  detail  of  social  life.  Negro 
slavery,  as  it  was  known  in  the  nineteenth  century,  which 
saw  the  last  great  struggle  for  its  abohtion,  was  a  trifle  as 
compared  with  slavery  in  the  early  Christian  centuries. 
Originally  captives  in  war,  the  slaves  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire were  in  large  part  of  equal  race,  of  equal  culture,  with 
their  masters.  ^Esop  and  Terence  were  slaves.  Most  of 
the  business  enterprises  of  imperial  Rome  were  conducted 
by  slaves.  An  uneducated  brute  might,  and  often  did, 
hold  in  bondage  a  man  fitted  to  be  a  university  professor, 
a  poet,  a  sculptor,  a  skilled  man  of  affairs.  The  demoral- 
izing effects  on  the  upper  class  were  far  greater  than  those 
of  negro  slavery,  great  as  the  latter  were.  The  injustice, 
the  ethical  wrong,  of  holding  one's  brother  man  in  bondage 
was  as  great  then  as  now.  But  Jesus  did  not  denounce 
slavery;  he  did  not  command  his  disciples  to  free  their 
slaves,  if  they  had  any ;  his  most  authoritative  followers 
exhorted  Christian  slaves  to  be  obedient  to  their  masters, 
and  not  even  to  desire  freedom  for  themselves,  but  to  be 
content  with  their  condition.  Paul  sent  a  runaway  slave 
back  to  his  master.  William  Lloyd  Garrison  lost  faith  in 
Christianity  because  Jesus  did  not  pronounce  slavery  to 
be  ethically  wrong,  and  because  his  apostles  condoned 
so  great  an  ethical  evil. 


THE   SOCL\L  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  409 

But  Jesus  and  his  apostles  taught  a  principle  with 
which  slavery  was  utterly  incompatible,  when  he  told 
men  that  they  all  belong  to  the  family  of  God.  "One  is 
your  Father,  and  all  you  are  brothers"  was  his  unwaver- 
ing utterance.  When  his  disciples  really  comprehended 
the  meaning  of  this  teaching,  how  could  one  of  them  hold 
another  in  bondage  ?  Slavery  was  certain  to  fade  away 
just  as  rapidly  as  this  principle  of  brotherhood  was  recog- 
nized. And  in  the  earliest  legislation  of  the  first  nom- 
inally Christian  emperor  we  find  edicts  recommending 
and  making  easy  the  manumission  of  slaves.  It  is  prob- 
ably true,  as  later  historical  investigators  urge,  that 
slavery  would  not  have  disappeared  so  quickly,  or  so 
completely  have  given  place  to  serfdom,  if  economic  con- 
ditions had  not  cooperated  with  ethical  motives ;  but 
the  ethical  motives  were  there,  and  were  powerful.  To 
ascribe  this  great  social  change  mainly  to  economic  con- 
ditions would  be  as  true  as  to  say  that  the  abolition  of 
slavery  in  our  own  country  was  due  to  economic  motives 
alone. 

We  see  here  the  immense  superiority  of  Jesus  over 
Mohammed  as  an  ethical  teacher.  Mohamm.cd  under- 
took to  be  a  social  reformer ;  he  was  a  social  reformer. 
By  divine  revelation,  as  he  professed  and  his  followers 
believed,  he  obtained  certain  specific  statutes  regulating 
the  evils  that  prevailed  in  his  time  concerning  marriage 
and  the  ownership  of  slaves.  Without  doubt,  his  legis- 
lation elevated  the  condition  of  woman  and  improved  the 
lot  of  slaves ;  he  accomplished  something  of  real  social 
value  in  both  directions.  But  he  did  so  at  the  cost  of 
legalizing  both  polygamy  and  slavery  forever.  No 
Christian  can  believe  either  to  be  right ;  no  Mohammedan 


410  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

is  free  to  believe  either  to  be  wrong.  The  ethics  of  Jesus 
are  incompatible  with  either ;  the  ethics  of  Mohammed 
recognize  and  perpetuate  both. 

Drunkenness  was  a  great  social  evil  in  the  time  of  Jesus, 
and  he  is  criticised  by  some  modern  reformers  because 
he  not  only  did  not  denounce  this  vice,  but  even  encour- 
aged the  moderate  use  of  wine  by  his  personal  example. 
He  made  wine  at  Cana,  according  to  the  fourth  gospel, 
and  the  language  of  the  ruler  of  the  feast  plainly  indicates 
that  it  would  intoxicate,  and  that  wedding  guests  were  in 
the  habit  of  drinking  until  they  could  not  tell  the  dif- 
ference between  good  wine  and  bad.  That  may  not 
warrant  the  inference  that  at  such  feasts  the  guests  be- 
came actually  intoxicated,  but  it  describes  an  indulgence 
beyond  the  bounds  of  moderation.  Jesus  deliberately 
avoided  the  life  of  an  ascetic,  and  by  so  doing  as  delib- 
erately challenged  the  condemnation  of  the  censorious, 
as  he  plainly  says  :  "  For  John  came  eating  no  bread  and 
drinking  no  wine,  and  you  say.  He  has  a  demon.  The 
Son  of  Man  came  eating  and  drinking,  and  you  say,  Be- 
hold a  glutton  and  a  drunkard."  The  late  Bishop  Fowler, 
of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  once  publicly  an- 
nounced that  he  would  refuse  to  believe  in  the  divinity 
of  Jesus  Christ,  if  convinced  that  He  made  and  drank 
wine  that  would  intoxicate.  Bishop  Fowler  lived  and 
died  a  believer  in  the  divinity  of  Christ,  but  he  did  so 
only  by  rejecting  the  plain  facts  recorded  in  the  gos- 
pels. This  is  an  example  of  the  lengths  to  which 
fanaticism  will  lead  a  reformer ;  it  shows  how  the 
vision  of  the  kingdom  can  be  quite  eclipsed  by  holding 
too  close  to  the  eye  some  wholly  desirable  social  change. 

The  truth  is,  that  around  the  ethics  of  Jesus  an  arti- 


THE   SOCIAL   TEACHINGS   OF  JESUS  411 

ficial  code  has  been  built  up  by  tradition,  as  the  Pharisees 
built  up  an  artificial  code  about  the  code  of  Moses,  and 
one  of  its  rules  is :  All  use  of  alcohol  is  a  sin.  No  ex- 
ception is  made  by  the  extreme  fanatics  for  even  the 
medicinal  use.  And  to  make  such  ethics  possible,  they 
have  been  forced  to  explain  away  the  facts  about  the 
teaching  and  practice  of  Jesus,  by  a  system  of  lying 
exegetics  that  proves  the  existence  of  two  kinds  of  wine 
mentioned  in  the  Bible :  one  unfermented  and  harmless, 
the  other  fermented  and  harmful.  Jesus,  according  to 
these  theorists,  made  and  used  the  unfermented  and  harm- 
less wine ;  alcoholic  wine  is  everywhere  condemned  in 
the  Scriptures,  and  especially  in  the  New  Testament. 
This  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures  to  support  the  two- 
wine  theory  is  beneath  contempt  as  to  its  scholarship, 
and  deser\dng  of  the  strongest  reprobation  for  its  un- 
ethical handling  of  an  ethical  question. 

The  apostles  were  not  more  explicit  in  their  teaching 
than  Jesus,  who  was  content  to  leave  the  whole  subject 
to  be  worked  out  under  his  general  law  of  love.  One  who 
loves  God  and  his  brother  will  be  temperate  in  all  things, 
and  will  never  use  alcoholic  beverage  to  excess,  nor  will 
he  eat  to  excess,  or  do  anything  else  to  excess.  He  will 
be  temperate  in  his  thoughts  and  words,  as  well  as  in  his 
drinking,  and  will  not  think  to  promote  ebriety  by  an 
inebriated  vocabulary.  But  the  apostles  do  indicate  some 
explicit  corollaries  from  the  general  principle  of  their 
Master.  No  drunkard  can  enter  the  kingdom  of  God,  is 
one  of  the  deductions  of  John,  and  is  plainly  an  author- 
ized deduction  ;  for  a  drunkard  has  forgotten  the  law  of 
love  and  has  indulged  in  a  vice  that  is  hurtful  both  to  him- 
self and  to  society.     Paul  draws  another  corollary:    "I 


412  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

will  neither  eat  meat  nor  drink  wine,  if  thereby  my 
brother  is  made  to  stumble ;"  and  though  he  undoubtedly 
means  abstinence  from  wine  that  had  been  offered  to 
idols,  rather  than  wine  in  general,  the  principle  holds 
universally  good.  Abstinence  in  the  spirit  of  asceticism 
is  anti-Christian ;  abstinence  for  the  sake  of  the  brother 
is  profoundly  Christian. 

But  though  abstinence  is  thus  commended,  and  is  be- 
coming more  and  more  recognized  as  the  higher  Chris- 
tian ethics  in  our  age,  it  is  not  possible  for  one  who  ac- 
cepts the  teaching  and  practice  of  Jesus  as  his  authority 
to  condemn  the  moderate  use  of  wine  as  a  sin.  It  may 
be  inexpedient  under  our  present  social  conditions ;  it  is 
not  per  se  wrong.  To  say  that  it  is  wrong,  is  to  say  that 
the  Master  himself  taught  less  than  the  perfect  ethics 
and  gave  us  an  example  of  less  than  perfect  conduct. 
But  science  has  thrown  new  light  on  what  constitutes 
moderation.  The  latest  physiological  researches  into 
the  effects  of  alcohol  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  it  is 
not  a  stimulant,  as  medical  science  has  long  taught  and 
practised,  but  always  a  narcotic  poison.  A  small  quan- 
tity, not  exceeding  two  ounces  a  day,  is  oxidized  in  a  nor^ 
mal  body,  and  so  far  supplies  the  place  of  the  carbohy- 
drates, sugar,  starch,  etc.  But  before  it  can  be  oxidized 
it  produces  certain  physiological  effects,  that  may  be 
recognized  as  incipient  narcotism.  The  feeling  of  ex- 
hilaration that  at  first  follows  the  ingestion  of  alcohol  is 
also  produced  on  many  people  by  opium,  and  on  nearly  all 
by  nitrous  oxide  in  small  doses  —  called  for  this  reason 
''laughing  gas"  —  both  of  which,  in  larger  dose,  produce 
profound  narcosis,  in  the  case  of  nitrous  oxide  lasting  but 
a  few  minutes  (whence  it  is  much  used  by  dentists  in  the 


THE   SOCIAL  TEACHINGS   OF  JESUS  413 

extraction  of  teeth) ,  while  the  opium  narcosis  persists  for 
hours.  A  quart  of  whiskey  taken  at  once  has  frequently 
produced  immediate  death  —  it  is  a  more  quickly  fatal 
poison  than  opium,  though  not  more  certain  in  its  action. 

If  a  man  would  never  take  fermented  liquors  except 
with  his  dinner,  and  then  not  more  than  a  pint  of  ordinary 
claret  or  its  equivalent,  he  would  probably  suffer  no 
measurable  harm,  and  this  might  be  fairly  called  mod- 
eration. Yet  experiments  show  that,  with  even  this  in- 
dulgence, for  several  hours  after  such  dining  a  m.an's 
physical  and  mental  powers  are  sensibly  diminished ; 
and  in  the  case  of  some  susceptible  persons  the  effect 
would  be  felt  even  on  the  following  day.  But  how  many 
who  permit  themselves  the  use  of  alcohoHc  beverages  do 
or  can  hold  themselves  to  so  strict  a  m.oderation  as  this  ? 
Practically  all  use  of  alcohol  is  excessive  use,  as  the  most 
recent  scientific  experiments  prove  beyond  a  reasonable 
doubt.  Only  an  abstinence  virtually  total  will  keep  a 
man  surely  within  the  limits  of  scientific  moderation. 

Of  course,  in  view  of  the  acknowledged  evils  of  the 
drink  habit  to-day,  to  plead  the  authority  of  Jesus  against 
the  regulation  or  suppression  of  making  and  selling  in- 
toxicating beverages,  and  especially  against  the  closing 
of  the  saloon,  is  futile  and  absurd.  When  in  our  cities 
the  majority  of  poUing-places  are  located  in  saloons, 
and  a  ci'azen  must  enter  a  drinking-placc  in  order  to  cast 
his  ballot,  the  evil  demands  abatem.ent,  without  regard 
to  abstract  ethics.  When  our  towns  have,  in  some  cases, 
a  saloon  to  every  eleven  voters,  a  social  condition  exists 
that  calls  for  prompt  action,  not  ethical  discussion.  The 
organs  of  the  liquor  traffic  are  wasting  their  time  when 
they  attempt  to  persuade  decent  people  that  their  busi- 


414  SOCIALISM  AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

ness  has  the  approval  of  Jesus,  or  of  any  ethical  teacher 
in  the  world's  history. 

V 

Nothing  in  the  social  teaching  of  Jesus  is  of  greater 
present  interest  and  importance  than  his  sayings  regard- 
ing the  possession  and  use  of  wealth.  It  is  easy  to  mis- 
understand his  teaching  by  listening  to  one  sort  of  say- 
ings only  among  his  recorded  words.  Like  everything  else 
in  his  doctrine,  Jesus  derived  his  views  of  property  from 
his  conception  of  the  God  of  love.  This  is  God's  world  ; 
it  is  God  who  made  it,  who  rules  it,  who  clothes  the  grass 
with  greenness  and  the  lilies  of  the  field  with  a  beauty 
exceeding  royal  splendor.  It  is  God  who  sends  the  rain 
and  makes  the  earth  fruitful,  and  causes  the  sun  to  shine 
on  just  and  unjust  ahke;  for  the  gifts  of  God,  though 
priceless,  are  v/ithout  price.  His  tireless  care  and  all- 
seeing  eye  watch  over  all  that  he  has  made.  Not  a  spar- 
row can  fall  to  the  ground  without  your  Father,  said  he ; 
the  very  hairs  of  your  heads  are  numbered.  Hence 
Jesus  was  the  great  optimist,  for  he  rested  on  the  con- 
viction of  the  Father's  love  and  the  Father's  power  and 
the  Father's  wisdom.  "Fear  not,  little  flock,  for  it  is 
your  Father's  good  pleasure  to  give  you  the  kingdom" 
are  the  words  in  which  Jesus  puts  the  truth  expressed  by 
his  greatest  disciple,  "for  we  know  that  all  things  work 
together  for  good  to  them  that  love  God."  This  is  as 
far  as  possible  from  that  shallow  good-nature  and  happy- 
go-lucky  improvidence  that  is  often  miscalled  optimism. 

Be  not  anxious  for  your  life,  what  you  shall  eat, 
Nor  yet  for  your  body,  what  you  shall  wear ; 
For  life  is  more  than  food, 


THE  SOCL\L  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  415 

And  the  body  than  clothing. 

Mark  the  ravens,  that  they  sow  not,  nor  reap, 

Which  have  no  storehouse  nor  barn, 

And  God  feeds  them. 

Of  how  much  more  value  are  you  than  birds  ! 

And  seek  not  what  you  shall  eat 

And  what  you  shall  drink. 

And  be  not  tossed  about  wdth  cares. 

For  after  all  these  things  the  nations  of  the  earth  are  eagerly 

seeldng, 
And  your  Father  knows  that  you  have  need  of  these  things. 
Nay,  seek  his  kingdom. 
And  all  these  things  shall  be  added  to  you. 

While  Jesus  was  not  a  socialist,  in  the  sense  that  he  had 
no  economic  theory  concerning  society,  he  comes  very 
close  to  the  ideas  of  modern  SociaKsm  in  this  teaching 
regarding  Providence.  Men  are  not  to  be  anxious  about 
the  things  of  the  present  life,  but  seek  first  the  kingdom 
of  God,  for  in  the  new  society  to  which  this  seeking  will 
give  rise,  the  law  of  love  mil  be  the  universal  solvent  of 
difficulties  and  no  social  problems  will  be  perplexing. 
This  has  been  described,  like  so  many  of  the  precepts  of 
Jesus,  as  a  counsel  of  perfection  merely,  a  thing  to  be 
preached  but  not  practised,  not  a  rule  adapted  to  actual 
life,  but  only  the  sublime  expression  of  the  most  profound 
religious  mood  —  mystical  moonshine,  in  short,  to  which 
a  man  of  sense  need  pay  no  attention. 

"Be  not  anxious"  is,  of  course,  a  precept  addressed 
to  disciples,  not  to  the  world  ;  spoken  to  those  presumed 
to  be  ruled  by  the  law  of  love,  it  is  an  integral  part  of  a 
great  ethical  idea.     Jesus  did  not  say  that  all  the  rest  of 


41 6  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

the  idea  and  its  applications  could  be  disregarded,  and 
that  this  would  then  work  by  itself.  As  society  is  now 
constituted,  with  its  complete  rejection  of  the  ethics  of 
Jesus,  men  cannot  escape  from  carking  care,  and  that  of 
itself  proves  that  our  society  is  not  the  society  that  Jesus 
contemplated.  Men  should  be  able  to  exist  without 
anxiety,  for  their  Father's  bounty  is  sufficient  for  all ;  it  is 
our  fellows  that  compel  care,  not  God.  "It  is  obvious," 
says  one,  "that  in  this  workaday  world  such  principles  are 
impracticable ;  no  business  can  be  conducted  on  these 
lines."  ^  Undoubtedly.  But  the  question  then  arises, 
Shall  we  reject  Jesus  or  reform  "business"  ?  A  society 
so  organized  that  the  precepts  of  Jesus  cannot  be  obeyed 
in  it  has  no  claim  whatever  to  be  considered  a  Christian 
society. 

In  a  really  Christian  society  there  would  be  no  occa- 
sion for  any  man  to  worry  about  food  and  clothing  and 
shelter.  The  world  produces  enough  for  the  wants  of 
every  living  being,  and  wisely  directed  industry  would 
increase  its  productiveness  tenfold.  Humanity  is  rich  ; 
men  are  poor.  Why?  Because  some  have,  by  reason 
of  their  superior  strength  of  body  or  mind,  obtained 
possession  of  an  undue  share  of  the  common  bounty  of 
nature ;  a  few  men  have  stolen  and  keep  to  themselves 
what  God  gave  to  the  many.  He  feeds  the  birds,  that 
neither  sow  nor  reap ;  but  the  birds,  not  being  rational 
creatures,  have  not  intelligence  enough  to  defeat  the 
Heavenly  Father's  plans.  There  is  none  among  them 
capable  of  organizing  a  "corner"  in  worms  or  fruits  of 
the  field,  none  to  seize  the  woods  as  his  possession  and 
charge  "rent"  for  all  who  would  roost  in  them,  and  so 

^Harnack  and  Hermann,  "The  Social  Gospel,"  p.  59. 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS   OF  JESUS  417 

they  all  come  alike  to  the  table  that  God  has  spread  for 
them,  and  each  one  gets  his  share  of  whatever  there  may 
be,  and  there  is  abundance  for  all.  But  we,  being  so 
greatly  the  superiors  of  these  "lower  animals,"  in  that 
we  have  reason,  and  are  not  guided  by  mere  instinct  but 
by  sense  and  foresight  —  we  men  have  contrived  in  our 
wisdom  that  some  of  us  shall  have  more  than  we  know 
how  to  use  of  the  Father's  common  provision,  while  the 
rest  of  us  have  barely  enough  to  keep  ourselves  alive, 
and  sometimes  perish  in  our  need. 

The  peculiar  note  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  regarding 
wealth  is  its  sanity.  His  ability  to  take  an  all-round 
view  of  so  complicated  a  question  is  most  impressive  as 
well  as  most  instructive.  Ethical  teachers  in  many  in- 
stances have  failed  just  there,  and  by  fixing  their  atten- 
tion on  a  single  phase  of  wealth  have  become  extremists 
and  fanatics.  Jesus  does  not  say  that  wealth  is  bad,  and 
therefore  to  be  shunned ;  he  does  not  say  that  wealth  is 
good  in  itself,  and  therefore  to  be  sought ;  he  recognizes 
in  the  possession  of  wealth  great  possibilities  of  both  good 
and  harm.  He  exhorts  men  to  "make  friends  by  means 
of  the  mammon  of  unrighteousness."  He  warns  them 
against  "the  deceitfulness  of  riches." 

The  conduct  of  Jesus  interprets  his  teaching.  He  had 
among  his  disciples  men  of  wealth,  like  Matthew  and 
Zaccheus ;  he  had  wealthy  friends,  who  possibly  became 
his  disciples  also,  like  Simon  and  Nicodemus  and  Joseph 
of  Arimathea.  He  showed  neither  social  predilections 
for  the  rich  nor  social  prejudices  against  them.  He  re- 
quired none  of  these  to  renounce  his  wealth,  though  he 
commended  Zaccheus  for  his  restitution  and  generosity. 
He  recognized  the  fact  that  men  of  wealth  may  be  men 

2E 


41 8  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

of  lofty  and  spiritual  nature,  and  he  loved  the  rich  young 
ruler  who  came  to  him  asking  the  way  of  eternal  life. 
But,  as  we  may  gather  from  the  story,  in  this  particular 
case  wealth  was  a  deadly  snare,  and  this  young  man  could 
become  a  disciple  of  Jesus  and  obtain  eternal  life  only  by 
renouncing  that  which  stood  between  him  and  the  king- 
dom of  God.  It  was  the  only  case  ^  in  which  such  renun- 
ciation was  made  a  test  of  discipleship,  and  Francis  of 
Assisi  went  beyond  what  was  written  when  he  made  this 
a  general  rule,  though  in  so  doing  he  had  the  approval 
of  Catholic  exegetes  and  theologians,  who  commended 
highly  a  precept  that  they  had  no  intention  of  obeying. 

Yet  there  may  well  be  many  cases  like  that  of  the  rich 
young  ruler,  in  which  no  palliative  treatment  will  answer. 
We  may  suspect  that  wealth  often  becomes  a  man's  ruin, 
that  the  very  weight  of  his  possessions  may  be  crushing 
his  spiritual  life  and  making  impossible  his  entrance  into 
the  kingdom.  In  such  cases,  as  for  that  young  man,  re- 
nunciation may  be  the  only  safety.  Does  not  experience 
fully  confirm  the  following  saying  of  Jesus  :  "How  hardly 
shall  they  that  have  riches  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
God"  ?  And  we  may  be  certain  that  in  this  version  we 
have  his  real  words,  rather  than  in  the  softened  form  given 
by  Mark,  "How  hard  is  it  for  them  that  trust  in  riches  to 

^  It  is  amusing  to  note  how  promptly  every  exegete  and  student  dis- 
covers, and  how  emphatically  he  announces,  that  the  words  of  Jesus  to  the 
rich  young  ruler  were  not  instruction  for  disciples  in  general,  but  discipline 
suited  to  this  particular  case.  Very  true,  but  why  so  uniform  a  stopping 
here,  so  general  a  neglect  to  inquire  how  numerous  are  the  other  cases  that 
need  the  same  treatment?  Did  Jesus  never  call  but  this  one  man  to 
forsake  all  and  follow  him?  Or  is  the  painfully  correct  exegesis  of  this 
text  not  so  much  an  attempt  to  comprehend  its  real  meaning,  as  anxiety 
to  find  an  excuse  for  not  making  a  wider  application  of  the  principle  of 
Jesus  to  the  facts  of  social  life  ? 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  419 

enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God."  It  is  Kke  a  camel  trying 
to  pass  through  a  needle's  eye  ;  for  all  practical  purposes 
the  thing  may  be  pronounced  impossible. 

There  is  in  Luke's  gospel  a  passage  that  has  been  con- 
fidently asserted  to  be  evidence  that  Jesus  was  hostile 
to  wealth  and  laid  dowTi  a  general  law  of  renunciation : 
"So  therefore  whosoever  he  be  of  you  that  does  not  re- 
nounce all  that  he  has,  he  cannot  be  my  disciple."  An 
easy  and  short-sighted  Hteralism  may  deduce  a  general 
law  of  renunciation  from  these  words,  but  this  is  precisely 
one  of  the  cases  in  which,  as  Jesus  liimself  assures  us,  the 
letter  kills,  but  the  spirit  gives  life.  We  must,  of  course, 
understand  this  saying  in  the  light  of  the  other  teaching 
of  Jesus  and  of  his  conduct.  If  we  avail  ourselves  of  this 
light,  it  will  become  plain  that  this  saying,  Hke  those  ac- 
companying words,  ''Whosoever  does  not  bear  his  cross 
and  come  after  me  cannot  be  my  disciple,"  is  intended 
to  describe  a  spirit,  not  to  impose  a  rule  of  action.  The 
literalism  that  takes  such  words,  as  the  French  say,  "at 
the  bottom  of  the  letter,"  and  the  indifference  that  evac- 
uates them  of  all  meaning  as  "orientalisms,"  are  equally 
to  be  shunned.  The  saying  about  the  taking  up  of  the 
cross  obviously  does  not  mean  that  every  disciple  of  Jesus 
must  actually  die  a  death  of  shame,  nor  does  the  saying 
about  renunciation  mean  that  every  disciple  must  for- 
mally renounce  all  his  possessions ;  in  both  cases  Jesus 
is  telling  us  what  sort  of  spirit  his  disciples  must  possess, 
of  what  sort  of  conduct  they  must  be  capable  in  emer- 
gency. They  must  so  highly  esteem  his  kingdom,  and 
so  rate  the  privilege  of  being  his  disciples  above  every- 
thing earthly,  that  they  shall  be  willing  to  renounce 
property  and  life  itself  for  the  kingdom's  sake.     Many 


420  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

will  never  be  called  on  to  make  the  actual  sacrifice,  "  the 
readiness  is  all." 

Luke's  gospel  contains  the  clearest  and  most  precise 
teaching  of  Jesus  regarding  wealth.  "Lay  not  up  for 
yourselves  treasures  upon  earth,"  is  not  to  be  taken  as  a 
prohibition  of  wealth,  but  as  an  exaltation  of  the  spiritual 
above  the  material,  as  is  shown  by  the  words  following : 
"Lay  up  for  yourselves  treasures  in  heaven."  And  this 
will  lead  any  man  to  a  true  valuation  of  wealth,  and  to 
comprehension  of  the  distinctive  teachings  of  Jesus  on 
this  subject :  that  by  a  member  of  his  kingdom  wealth 
is  possessed  but  not  owned.  Individualism  says  now, 
as  it  has  always  said,  "Is  it  not  lawful  for  me  to  do  what 
I  will  with  mine  own  ?"  but  the  ethics  of  Jesus  says.  No, 
for  it  is  not  your  own,  and  if  it  were,  you  might  not  use  it 
save  to  promote  your  brother's  welfare  equally  with  yours. 
Disciples  of  Jesus  are  stewards  of  wealth,  not  owners. 
And  the  question  for  stewardship  is  not,  How  much  of 
my  wealth  must  I  give  to  God  and  my  brother?  but, 
How  much  of  God's  wealth  am  I  justified  in  using  for 
myself  ? 

This  doctrine  of  stewardship  is  the  chief  contribution 
of  Jesus  to  the  ethics  of  property.  According  to  him  a 
man  owns  nothing;  he  owes  everything.  Wealth  is  a 
trust.  The  doctrine  is  set  forth  with  profusion  of  illus- 
tration, in  the  parables  of  the  talents  and  the  pounds, 
the  unrighteous  steward,  and  the  like.  Trusts  differ  in 
amount,  not  in  character  —  stewardship  is  the  universal 
fact.  Anybody  who  possesses  anything  is,  according  to 
the  ethics  of  Jesus,  a  rich  man  and  a  steward.  Wealth, 
being  a  trust,  imposes  special  responsibility.  Our  con- 
ventional ideas  need  much  revision  to  make  them  corre- 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  421 

spond  with  the  teachings  of  Jesus.  The  rich  man  is  a 
steward,  but  so  is  he  whom  we  call  the  poor  man  —  per- 
haps the  poor  man  is  in  the  greater  danger  of  the  two  of 
neglecting  his  stewardship.  Not  to  be  envious  of  the 
rich  is  hard.  It  would  be  exceedingly  difficult  to  guess 
how  much  of  the  present  social  unrest  and  the  popularity 
of  the  ideals  of  SociaKsm  has  no  better  foundation  than 
the  envy  of  those  who  have  by  those  who  have  not. 
Many  a  man  who  is  not  worth  a  dollar  is  as  abject  a  wor- 
shipper of  Mammon,  as  true  an  adorer  of  wealth,  as  the 
most  purse-proud  millionnaire.  It  is  not  necessary  to  be 
rich,  but  only  to  desire  riches  as  the  chief  earthly  good, 
to  become  a  subject  of  Mammon.  And  upon  a  world 
that  desires  God  and  Mammon,  Jesus  presses  the  choice 
of  God  or  Mammon.  This  is  why  Jesus  does  not  call  on 
the  rich  to  divide  their  wealth  with  the  poor;  he  calls 
them  into  his  kingdom  of  the  spirit,  confident  that  if 
they  really  learn  his  secret,  they  will  feel  and  act  on  his 
saying  that  "it  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive." 
Thus  far  most  men  beheve  this  to  be  true  only  of  kicks 
and  cuffs. 

It  is  in  accordance  with  the  ethics  of  Jesus,  if  not  in 
consequence  of  them,  that  a  great  change  is  visible  in 
the  social  estimation  of  the  rich.  Formerly  they  were 
measured  solely  by  the  amount  of  their  wealth  —  how 
much  is  he  worth  ?  was  the  form  of  words,  in  which  it  was 
impHed  that  a  man's  value  was  exactly  proportioned  to 
his  property.  Now  the  rich  man  is  coming  to  be  more 
and  more  measured  by  his  social  usefulness,  how  much  he 
is  "worth"  in  service,  not  alone  in  money.  In  other 
words,  the  standard  of  value  is  coming  to  be  a  man's 
actual  contribution  to  the  social  order.     He  must  justify 


422  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

his  existence  or  go.  Men  of  wealth  are  beginning  to 
recognize  more  clearly  the  equity  of  this  standard,  to 
acknowledge  the  extent  of  their  social  obligations,  and  not 
a  few  are  honestly  asking  for  the  best  way  in  which  these 
obligations  may  be  discharged.  If  they  have  made  their 
money  under  a  bad  system,  that  is  no  more  their  fault 
than  it  is  the  fault  of  others ;  if  they  are  seeking  to  use 
their  money  for  the  good  of  their  fellows,  that  is  certainly 
their  virtue. 

VI 

One  reason  why  there  are  not  more  striking  socialistic 
elements  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus  regarding  wealth  may 
be  that  there  was  so  large  an  element  of  Socialism  in  the 
Jewish  system,  which  was  an  underlying  assumption  on 
the  part  of  himself  and  his  hearers.  The  Jewish  land 
tenure,  as  has  often  been  pointed  out,  was  essentially 
socialistic,  with  its  provision  of  reversion  to  the  original 
owner  in  every  jubilee  year.  Modern  society  shows  a 
tendency  to  come  back  to  the  Mosaic  doctrine  that  rent 
and  interest  are  in  their  nature  immoral.  But  again,  we 
are  assured  that  "business"  could  not  be  carried  on 
without  them.  It  is  perfectly  true,  and  perfectly  con- 
clusive proof  that  modern  business  ought  not  to  be 
carried  on. 

Man's  life  does  not  consist  in  the  things  that  he  has, 
says  Jesus,  but  neither  does  it  consist  in  the  things  that 
he  has  not,  as  says  the  ascetic.  Real  wealth  is  in  the  man 
himself.  Who  was  ever  poorer  than  Jesus,  as  men  count 
wealth  ?  Who  was  ever  so  rich  as  Jesus,  in  character, 
in  spiritual  influence  ?  Men  must  have  a  motive  inde- 
pendent of  the  outward  good,  in  order  to  attain  the  out- 
ward good ;  for  it  is  precisely  the  seeking  of  outward  good 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  423 

for  its  own  sake  and  for  self  that  confines  its  attainment  to 
the  few  and  denies  it  to  the  many.  Jesus,  therefore, 
bids  his  followers  shun  the  low  places  of  what  the  world 
calls  success,  to  renounce  that  which  the  world  rewards 
with  honor  and  applause,  and  patiently  essay  with 
him  the  difficult  heights  of  love  and  fidelity  and  humble 
service. 

But  how  serve  one's  fellows  ?  What  is  doing  them 
good  ?  The  Christian  centuries  have  replied  by  what 
they  have  called  "charity."  And  for  this  the  followers 
of  Christ  can  apparently  plead  the  words  of  their  Master. 
"Give  to  him  that  asks  "  is  one  of  the  practical  apphca- 
tions  of  the  great  law  of  love  made  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus. 
But  by  what  right  have  interpreters  of  Jesus,  from  the 
early  Fathers  to  Tolstoi,  restricted  the  scope  of  these 
words  mainly  to  the  gift  of  money?  Give  to  him  that 
asks,  yes,  give  him  the  only  gift  worth  your  giving  or  his 
accepting,  give  him  love,  give  him  yourself.  The  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  is  that  all  our  life  is  to  be  a  giving  of  self  to 
the  needy,  the  motive  of  such  giving  love,  and  its  purpose 
the  saving  of  our  brother.  "Sell  all  that  you  have  and 
give  to  the  poor,"  was  given  as  a  way  of  perfection  to  the 
rich  young  ruler,  not  so  much  for  the  sake  of  the  poor,  as 
for  the  sake  of  the  giver  —  it  was  good  for  this  man's 
soul  that  he  should  dispossess  himself  of  that  which  hung 
like  a  millstone  about  his  neck.  The  value  of  personal 
ministry,  as  distinguished  from  the  giving  of  money,  is 
highly  emphasized  in  the  parable  of  the  sheep  and  the 
goats.  Those  on  the  left  have  been  selfish,  hard-hearted, 
not  merely  stingy.  Likewise,  what  is  condemned  in  the 
parable  of  Dives  and  Lazarus  is  no  specific  sin,  such 
as  drunkenness  and  gluttony,  but  hcartlcssness.     The 


424  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

offence  of  Dives  was  not  that  he  fared  sumptuously  every 
day,  but  that  he  had  no  thought  for  the  poor  beggar  at 
his  gate.  The  very  dogs  were  kinder  to  Lazarus  than 
feasting  Dives,  and,  therefore,  the  rich  man  found  no 
place  in  Abraham's  bosom,  the  symbol  of  God's  kingdom 
of  love.  We  see  the  modern  parallel  daily,  in  the  people 
of  Fifth  Avenue  and  the  people  of  the  East  side  —  Dives 
still  has  not  found  the  joy  of  service  and  of  sacrifice,  and 
he  will  therefore  miss  its  reward.  Yet  we  need  also  to 
remember  that  there  is  no  moral  quality  in  poverty,  by 
itself,  more  than  in  riches ;  it  is  only  more  favorable  soil 
for  the  growth  of  the  humbler  virtues. 

The  Church  of  the  Middle  Ages  shows  us  what  must 
be  the  result  of  the  literal  interpretation  of  the  injunctions 
of  Jesus.  That  Church  greatly  magnified  almsgiving, 
as  not  merely  a  Christian  virtue,  but  the  means  of  sal- 
vation. By  literal  obedience  to  the  words  of  Jesus,  as 
the  Church  taught  them,  the  mediaeval  world  did  its 
best  to  reduce  all  men  to  a  common  level  of  poverty. 
Such  giving  exhausts  the  source  of  supply,  without  vis- 
ibly bettering  the  condition  of  the  poor ;  and  men  have 
come  to  see  that  giving,  which  makes  a  brother  a  parasite 
on  society,  saps  his  manhood,  ruins  his  character,  cannot 
be  the  giving  that  Jesus  commanded  in  the  name  of  love. 
For  if  this  is  to  love  one's  brother,  what  would  it  be  to 
hate  him  ? 

On  the  other  hand,  even  more  blameworthy  is  that 
hard-hearted  turning  away  from  misery  and  distress, 
on  the  plea  that  giving  might  harm  the  recipient.  Our 
danger  is  not  of  giving  too  much,  but  of  giving  too  little. 
We  have  not  learned  the  secret  of  Jesus  until,  seeing  him 
in  our  distressed  brother,  we  give  ourselves  to  the  Christ 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS   OF  JESUS  425 

in  our  brother.  Almsgiving  is  no  incidental  and  volun- 
tary thing  in  the  life  of  a  Christian ;  it  is  one  form  of  that 
universal  service  of  their  fellows  which  Jesus  calls  all 
his  followers  to  render  cheerfully  for  his  sake.  And, 
accordingly,  a  follower  of  Jesus  will  give,  not  to  promote 
his  own  sanctity  or  to  save  his  own  soul,  but  to  save  his 
brother.  The  one  question  that  he  will  ask  under  all 
circumstances  —  and  its  answer  will  be  the  solution  of 
most  problems,  if  not  of  all  —  is,  What  and  how  shall  I 
give  so  as  most  efltectively  to  help  my  brother  ? 

Nor  is  the  disciple  of  Jesus  to  look  for  gratitude  in 
return,  else  the  giving  is  not  gift  but  barter.  And  a  large 
part  of  our  giving  is  unconscious  barter.  We  have  classi- 
fied the  poor  as  the  "deserving"  and  the  "undeserving." 
Such  a  division  is  neither  Christian  nor  rational ;  what  we 
ought  to  recognize  is  that  the  needs  of  men  are  different. 
One  needs  money  or  food  most,  another  most  needs  love 
and  sympathy,  another  needs  to  be  taught  self-help  most 
of  all.  To  give  lazily,  selfishly,  indiscriminately,  harms 
ourselves  quite  as  much  as  it  can  harm  the  receiver, 
though  it  is  often  ruinous  to  him.  We  recognize  the  de- 
moralizing efi'ects  of  charity  on  our  brother  much  more 
clearly  than  on  ourselves ;  it  is  ever  the  easier  task  to 
cast  the  mote  out  of  another's  eye. 

And  let  us  comprehend,  if  we  can,  that  what  the  poor 
ask  of  us,  wnat  they  have  a  right  to  ask,  is  not  "charity" 
but  justice.  Charity  is  simply  an  attempt  to  compound 
our  social  sins,  to  help  the  wounded  and  crippled  in  the 
battle  of  life  ;  but  what  we  are  called  to  do  is,  to  stop  the 
battle.  If  bullets  continue  to  fly,  somebody  must  be  hit 
and  hurt. 


426  SOCIALISM  AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 


VII 


The  teaching  of  Jesus  regarding  the  state  is  of  the  brief- 
est, comprised  in  a  single  saying,  but  it  covers  the  whole 
ground.     It  was  given  in  reply  to  the  sly  Pharisee  who 
asked  him  whether  it  were  lawful    to  pay  tribute  to 
C^sar.     The  trap  was  skilfully  contrived;   and  answer 
would,  it  seemed,  impale  him  on  one  horn  or  the  other  of 
a  dilemma.     If  he  said  Yes,  the  Pharisees  could  turn  to 
the  crowd  with,  This  man  cannot  be  the  Messiah,  for  he 
is  neither  patriotic  or  pious.     If  he  said  No,  they  could 
denounce  him  to  Pilate,  as  advocating  sedition.     "Show 
me  the  tribute  money,"  he  said;    they  brought  him  a 
denarius.     "Whose  is  the  image  and  superscription?" 
he  inquired,  and  they  repKed,  "Cassar's."     The  dilemma 
no  longer  existed;   by  their  production  of  the  denarius 
and  their  recognition  of  the  imperial  tokens,  the  Pharisees 
had  convicted  themselves  of  acknowledging  the  Roman 
poKtical  authority.     The  further  word  of  Jesus,  therefore, 
was  not  so  much  an  escape  from  the  snare  they  had  set 
for  him,  as  a  declaration  that  their  conduct  was  better 
than  their  theory,  that  there  was  no  contradiction  then 
and  need  never  be  any  contradiction  between  a  man's 
religious  and  his  poKtical  duties:    "Render  therefore 
unto  Casar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's,  and  unto  God 
the  things  that  are  God's."     Under  the  law  of  love  there 
is  no  distinction  between  the  sacred  and  the  secular; 
the  religious  is  the  poHtical  and  the  political  is  the  re- 
ligious.    As  Paul  afterwards  correctly  interpreted  and 
enlarged  the  principle,  "the  powers  that  be  are  ordained 
of  God" ;  he  has  established  civil  government ;  the  mag- 
istrate is  his  minister. 

If  Jesus  and  Paul  could  say  this  of  the  despotic  rule  of 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS   OF  JESUS  427 

imperial  Rome,  surely  it  may  be  said  of  every  other  form 
of  government.  But  shall  we  interpret  these  words  with 
such  literalness  as  to  find  in  them  a  command  to  endure 
without  resistance  every  form  of  oppression  by  govern- 
ment ?  Do  they  contain  a  denial  of  what  it  is  the  fash- 
ion now  to  call  "the  sacred  right  of  insurrection"  ?  Des- 
potisms, and  their  minions,  have  so  interpreted  the  words 
in  all  ages,  and  have  used  the  authority  of  Jesus  to  main- 
tain themselves ;  but  it  is  impossible  to  think  that  Jesus 
or  Paul  intended  to  teach  anything  that  so  flatly  contra- 
dicts fundamental  ethical  instincts.  No,  what  is  here 
described  is  the  normal  conduct  of  the  followers  of  Jesus 
under  normal  government.  When  government  fulfils  its 
natural  functions  of  preserving  peace  and  administering 
justice,  even  though  it  be  a  despotism,  forcible  resist- 
ance is  not  justified.  When  a  government  fails  to  fulfil 
its  function,  and  neither  preserves  peace  nor  adminis- 
ters justice,  even  though  it  be  in  name  a  republican 
democracy,  forcible  overthrow  of  such  a  government  is 
justified.  Again  the  law  of  love,  the  principle  that  bids 
one  consider  the  welfare  of  all,  and  not  merely  his  own, 
comes  in  to  modify  the  rule  of  obedience  to  magistrates. 
It  is  not  the  duty  of  followers  of  Jesus  to  submit  to  un- 
just government,  to  permit  poHtical  institutions  theo- 
retically good  to  be  so  administered  as  to  harm  the  entire 
community.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  the  duty  of  Chris- 
tians to  reform  such  abuses,  peacefully  if  they  may,  with 
violence  if  they  must.^  Let  justice  prevail  though  the 
heavens  fall  has  been  a  valid  principle  of  ethics  for  many 

•  This  is  by  no  means  equivalent  to  adopting  as  our  ethical  standard 
the  words  of  Kant:  "Thanks  to  Nature  for  intolerance,  for  envious 
and  emulous  self-seeking,  for  the  insatiable  desire  to  have  and  to  rule  I 
Without  this,  all  the  desirable  qualities  of  humanity  would  lie  eternally 


428  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

centuries,  and  though  something  hackneyed,  has  not  lost 
its  force. 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  does  not  this  contradict  other 
teaching  of  Jesus  ?  Does  he  not  counsel  submission  to 
oppression,  non-resistance  to  evil-doers  in  all  cases? 
Apparently  he  does.  "  If  any  man  would  go  to  law  with 
you  and  take  away  your  tunic,  let  him  have  your  cloak 
also,"  seems  to  mean  that  a  man  is  not  to  defend  himself 
against  injustice.  "And  whosoever  shall  compel  you  to 
go  one  mile,  go  with  him  two,"  seems  to  exhort  to  sub- 
mission, however  oppressive  government  may  be. 
While  "Resist  not  him  who  is  evil,  but  whosoever  smites 
you  on  the  right  cheek  turn  to  him  the  other  also"  seems 
to  forbid  any  protection  of  self  or  others  from  personal  vio- 
lence. But  such  literal  interpretation  has  been  advo- 
cated by  not  a  few  Christian  sects,  as  well  as  by  individ- 
uals of  influence,  without  finding  favor  among  Christian 
people  at  large. 

There  is  a  twofold  difficulty  in  the  way  of  adopting 
this  extreme  literalism  as  a  standard  of  interpretation. 
First,  the  conduct  thus  seemingly  required  was  not  the 
conduct  of  Jesus  himself.  When  he  was  smitten  on  one 
cheek  in  the  court  of  the  Sanhedrin,  he  did  not  turn  the 
other  to  the  officer,  but  claimed  to  be  heard  and  con- 
demned before  he  was  punished.  It  was  contrary  to  the 
Jewish  law  to  strike  an  uncondemned  prisoner,  and  Jesus 
stood  on  his  rights  as  a  Jew.  We  are  warranted,  there- 
fore, in  concluding  that  Jesus  is,  as  usual,  stating  a  prin- 
ciple, not  a  rule ;  inculcating  a  spirit  to  be  cherished,  not 
giving  a  precept  to  be  exactly  followed  in  all  cases.     Men 

undeveloped.     Man  wants'peace,  but  Nature  knows  better  what  is  neces- 
sary for  him  —  she  wants  strife." 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS   OF  JESUS  429 

are  too  quick  to  resent  injury,  to  resort  to  violence,  to 
rebel  against  oppression ;  what  they  need  is  restraint  as 
to  these  things,  not  encouragement.  And  so  Jesus  sug- 
gests that  men  are  to  be  slow  to  resent,  to  rebel,  to  use 
force ;  that  they  are  to  bear  insult  and  oppression  as  long 
as  possible,  and  to  claim  legal  rights  and  repel  violence 
with  violence  only  as  a  last  resort,  after  all  other  means 
have  been  fully  tried  and  failed.  He  taught  this  truth, 
the  lesson  that  men  most  require  to  learn,  by  precept  and 
example :  — 

The  best  of  men 
Who  e'er  wore  earth  about  Him  was  a  sufferer ; 
A  soft,  meek,  patient,  humble,  tranquil  spirit, 
The  first  true  gentleman  that  ever  hved. 

Our  second  diificulty  is  that  the  supposed  teaching  of 
Jesus  contradicts  a  primal  human  instinct,  the  instinct 
of  self-protection,  and  a  primal  Christian  virtue,  the  pro- 
tection of  the  weak  by  the  strong.  Primal  instincts  are 
never  wrong.  It  may  be,  it  generally  is,  a  question  how 
they  may  be  lawfully  exercised,  but  the  instincts  them- 
selves are  sound.  This  is  equally  the  belief  of  the  Chris- 
tian and  the  evolutionist.  The  Christian  believes  that 
God  made  man  in  his  image ;  therefore,  the  basal  facts 
of  human  nature  are  of  divine  origin,  and  unless  it  can  be 
proved  that  an  instinct  is  induced  by  sin  the  presump- 
tion is  that  it  is  healthy  and  to  be  followed.  The  evolu- 
tionist believes  that  all  these  instincts  have  been  devel- 
oped by  the  ex-perience  of  the  race,  and  for  that  reason 
following  them  is  the  line  of  safety,  hence  ethical.  Nat- 
ural science  and  Christian  ethics  alike,  therefore,  affirm 
that  the  impulse  toward  self-defence  is  not  unethical  but 
ethical. 


430  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

Not  only  is  self -pro  ted  ion  a  primary  human  instinct, 
but  protection  of  our  brother  is  a  necessary  inference  from 
the  law  of  love.  A  teacher  so  sane  as  Jesus  cannot  be 
rationally  supposed  to  have  intentionally  contradicted 
either  the  instinct  or  the  inference.  An  interpretation  of 
his  words  that  contradicts  both  must  be  a  false  interpreta- 
tion. He  cannot  possibly  have  counselled  a  cowardly 
abandonment  of  duty  towards  the  victims  of  wrong-doing, 
for  that  would  be  a  breach  of  the  law  of  love.  And  there 
is  this  difference  between  the  instinct  to  protect  one's  self 
and  the  inference  that  it  is  a  duty  to  protect  the  weaker 
brother :  self-protection  is  a  right  that  may  possibly  be 
waived,  while  protection  of  another  is  a  duty  that  cannot 
be  ethically  evaded.  A  man  may  perhaps  submit  to 
violence  done  himself,  if  he  will,  but  he  may  not  permit 
violence  to  be  done  to  his  neighbor  whom  it  is  within  his 
power  to  protect.  It  is  fairly  arguable  also,  that,  while 
as  a  purely  personal  question,  a  man  may  elect  to  endure 
rather  than  to  repel  violence,  in  many  cases  such  submis- 
sion would  be  unethical.  For  it  would  encourage  in 
rudeness  and  brutality  one  who  for  his  own  sake,  and  for 
the  sake  of  other  possible  victims,  ought  to  be  effectually 
taught  to  behave  himself  peaceably.  There  is  truth  in 
the  old  quip,  that  if  we  wish  peace  we  must  be  ready  to 
fight  for  it.  To  believe  that  Jesus  commands  his  fol- 
lowers to  stand  by  inactive  and  see  a  child  or  a  woman 
suffer  physical  violence  from  some  brutal  fellow,  is  in- 
credible. The  least  we  can  say  of  the  great  Teacher  is 
that  he  was  a  normal  man,  and  no  normal  man  could  do 
or  teach  that.  Tolstoi  would  perhaps  approve  of  a  man's 
remonstrating  with  the  evil-doer  in  such  a  case,  but  the 
only  effectual  remonstrance  with  a  brute  who  will  abuse 
woman  or  child  is  remonstrance  with  fist  or  club. 


THE   SOCI-'VL  TEACHINGS   OF  JESUS  431 

It  is  also  too  often  forgotten  —  Tolstoi  always  forgets 
it  —  that  physical  force  is  not  the  only  possible  form  of 
violence.  Words  often  hurt  worse  than  blows.  "I  will 
speak  daggers  though  I  use  none,"  says  Hamlet.  To 
turn  the  cheek  and  yet  speak  stinging  words,  is  to  obey 
the  doctrine  of  non-resistance  in  the  letter  and  violate 
it  in  the  spirit.  The  scathing  rebukes  of  Jesus  must  have 
seemed  much  more  formidable  to  the  Pharisees  than  the 
whip  of  small  cords  in  his  hands ;  neither  can  be  recon- 
ciled with  the  interpretation  that  some  would  put  on  such 
a  maxim  as,  "Resist  not  the  evil  man." 

If  violence  is  not  absolutely  prohibited  between  in- 
dividuals, it  cannot  be  unlawful  between  nations.  That 
is  to  say,  war  is  lawful  in  self-defence,  or  for  the  protec- 
tion of  a  weak  people  against  the  aggression  of  a  stronger, 
if  it  is  lawful  for  an  individual  to  protect  himself  or  an- 
o*^her  by  force.  And  as  we  have  concluded  that  the  latter 
is  lawful,  in  extreme  cases,  and  may  even  in  some  cir- 
cumstances become  a  duty,  the  same  conclusion  follows 
regarding  war.  That  the  American  colonies  were  justi- 
fied in  renouncing  their  allegiance  to  England  and  fight- 
ing for  their  independence,  failing  peaceful  means  of 
redress,  is  a  proposition  defensible  in  accordance  with 
the  principle  of  Jesus.  That  it  was  the  duty  of  the  United 
States  to  intervene  and  prevent  the  further  oppression  of 
Cuba  by  Spain  is  an  even  plainer  ethical  proposition. 
With  regard  to  two  other  wars  in  which  our  country  has 
been  concerned,  it  is  a  fair  question  whether  they  were 
not  unnecessary,  whether  conflict  might  not  have  been 
averted  by  more  tact  and  patience  ;  and  that  the  Mexican 
war  was  ethically  indefensible  is  now  admitted  by  every 
candid  American  historian. 


432  SOCIALISM    AND   THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

What  we  thus  find  to  be  true  regarding  our  national 
history,  is  true  of  the  world  at  large.  Many  wars  have 
been  due  to  unjustifiable  aggression,  others  grew  out  of 
haste  and  passion  and  might  easily  have  been  averted ; 
a  small  residue  were  justifiable.  The  thesis  sometimes 
propounded  by  extreme  advocates  of  peace  is  indefensible  : 
"There  never  was  a  good  war  nor  a  bad  peace."  The 
memory  of  any  reader  of  general  history  will  supply  in- 
stances that  confute  both  clauses  of  the  thesis.  But 
that  the  greater  part  of  the  fighting  that  history  records 
was  unnecessary,  unjustifiable,  and  valueless,  is  a  thesis 
proved  to  be  true  by  a  host  of  examples. 

Quite  apart  from  what  we  m.ay  learn  from  history,  how- 
ever, the  case  against  light  or  frequent  recourse  to  arms 
in  the  settlement  of  international  disputes  is  very  strong. 
When  nations  acknowledged  no  ethical  obligations,  when 
there  was  no  code  of  things  that  it  is  forbidden  nations  to 
do,  enforcible  by  the  common  conscience  of  the  civilized 
world,  each  nation  was  compelled  to  enforce  its  claims 
by  the  sword  or  submit  to  have  its  rights  trampled  upon 
without  redress.  But  as  civilization  has  progressed,  the 
idea  of  national  honor  and  national  duty  has  strengthened; 
a  code  of  international  obligations  and  conduct  has  come 
to  be  recognized  as  binding  on  all  countries  that  aspire 
to  be  ranked  among  the  enlightened  and  honorable  na- 
tions of  the  world ;  and  each  decade  sees  this  code  enlarg- 
ing in  scope  and  becoming  more  accurately  obeyed. 
Means  of  enforcement  there  are  none,  beyond  the  appeal 
that  the  code  itself  makes  to  the  conscience  of  every 
people  and  government.  And  just  as  disputes  between 
individuals,  in  every  enlightened  country,  are  now  sub- 
mitted to  the  arbitration  of  courts,  instead  of  being  set- 


THE  SOCI.\L  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  433 

tied  as  of  yore  by  personal  combat,  and  just  as  the  willing- 
ness of  men  to  submit  their  differences  to  this  peaceful 
arbitration  is  now  recognized  as  one  of  the  chief  tests  of 
a  people's  progress  in  civilization ;  so,  it  is  more  and  more 
felt,  should  be  the  case  with  disputes  between  nations. 
Few  questions  can  now  arise  between  civilized  countries 
that  might  not  be  peacefully  and  honorably  decided  by 
a  competent  and  impartial  tribunal,  provided  only  that 
both  parties  to  the  dispute  are  willing  to  submit  their 
case  and  abide  by  the  decision.  It  is  an  augury  of  the 
future  peace  of  the  world  that  the  President  of  the  United 
States  and  the  Foreign  Minister  of  Great  Britain  have 
publicly  announced  as  their  policy  the  negotiation  of  a 
treaty  of  arbitration,  without  limit  to  the  questions 
arising.  War  can  never  decide  the  justice  of  a  nation's 
cause ;  war  can  only  show  which  is  the  stronger  of  two 
disputing  nations.  International  arbitration  and  univer- 
sal peace  is  a  movement  in  strict  accord  with  the  ethics 
of  Jesus ;  for  his  law  of  love  bids  either  individuals  or 
nations  avoid  strife  and  bloodshed,  whenever  peace  is 
possible  without  sacrifice  of  a  larger  duty  imposed  by 
the  same  law. 

Universal  peace  is  also  the  ideal  and  aim  of  Socialism. 
It  proclaims  a  worldwide  brotherhood  of  man  that  is 
incompatible  with  warfare.  The  waste  of  wealth  in- 
separable from  war  is  abhorrent  to  Socialism ;  and  the 
constant  preparation  for  war  is  possibly  a  greater  burden 
than  war  itself.  Not  only  the  actual  taxation  imposed 
on  the  peoples  of  Europe  by  armaments,  but  the  perma- 
nent withdrawal  of  one-third  of  the  population  from  pro- 
ductive activities,  constitutes  a  burden  that,  when  pro- 
longed for  a  generation,  may  well  amount  to  more  than 

2  K 


434  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

the  cost  of  a  short,  sharp,  and  decisive  conflict,  such  as 
modern  wars  have  come  to  be.  CiviHzation  is  being 
crushed  under  its  burden  of  mihtarism,  and  none  sees 
this  more  clearly  than  the  sociahst,  none  is  more  insistent 
that  a  remedy  must  be  found.  Many  socialist  writers 
find  as  bitter  things  to  say  of  "patriotism"  as  of  religion ; 
and  the  boastful,  swaggering,  bullying  Jingoism  that  is 
commonly  confounded  with  patriotism  certainly  deserves 
all  their  reprobation.  Here  is  a  point  where  the  forces 
of  Socialism  and  of  Christianity  converge,  and  against 
their  combined  energy,  if  it  be  but  wisely  directed,  the 
advocates  of  militarism  will  contend  in  vain. 


XI 

THE  SOCIAL  FAILURE   OF  THE   CHURCH 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

On  the  early  institutions  of  Christianity :  — 
Harnack,  The  Constitution  and  Law  of  the  Church  in  the  First 
Two  Centuries,  Crown  Theological  Library.     New  York,  1910. 

,  The  Expansion  of  Christianity  in  the  First  Three  Centuries, 

2  vols.     New  York,  1904. 
Wernle,  The  Beginnings  of  Christianity,  2  vols.     New  York,  1903. 
Weizsacker,  The  ApostoUc  Age,  2  vols.     New  York,  1899. 
ScmiiDT,  Social  Results  of  Early  Christianity.     London,  1885. 
Ulhorn,  Conflict  of  Christianity  with  Heathenism.     New  York, 

1879. 
,  Christian  Charity  in  the  Ancient  Church.     New  York,  1883. 

On  the  teachings  of  the  Apostle  Paul :  — 

Weiss,  Biblical  Theology  of  the  New  Testament,  2  vols.  Edin- 
burgh, 1882. 

Sabatier,  The  Apostle  Paul.     London,  1896. 

Wrede,  Paul.     Boston,  1908. 

Stevens,  The  Pauline  Theology.     New  York,  1892. 

Pfleiderer,  Paulinism,  2  vols.     London,  1877. 

,  The  Influence  of  the  Apostle  Paul  on  the  Development  of 

Christianity.     New  York,  1885. 

On  Church  and  State :  — 

Geffcken,  Church  and  State,  their  Relations  Historically  Con- 
sidered, 2  vols.     London,  1877. 

Hergenrother,  The  Cathohc  Church  and  the  Christian  State. 
London,  1876. 


XI 

THE   SOCIAL  FAILURE   OF   THE   CHURCH 

Failure  may  be  absolute  or  relative.  Christianity 
began  with  a  distinct  consciousness  of  a  social  mission. 
No  one  who  reads  the  history  of  Christianity  with  a  can- 
did mind  will  question  the  absolute  achievement  of  the 
Church  in  righting  social  wrongs  and  ameliorating  social 
evils.  If  it  has  not  accomplished  all  that  too  partial  ad- 
vocates have  sometimes  claimed  for  it,  it  has  accom- 
plished much.  But  when  we  ask  whether  it  has  realized 
the  ideal  of  Jesus,  it  is  no  longer  a  question  of  what  Chris- 
tianity has  done,  but  of  how  much  it  has  left  undone, 
and  even  unattempted.  The  same  candid  mind  that  will 
frankly  recognize  the  worth  of  the  actual  achievement 
must  also  conclude  that  the  Church  has  not  come  within 
measurable  distance  of  the  ideal  of  Jesus,  nor  even  made 
a  serious  attempt  to  realize  that  ideal. 

Whether  the  gospels  give  us  the  actual  words  of  Jesus, 
or  teachings  greatly  modified  by  oral  tradition  before 
they  were  brought  into  their  present  form,  is  immaterial 
for  our  purpose.  For  it  cannot  be  denied  that  in  the 
gospels  we  see,  as  in  a  mirror,  the  ideal  of  the  character 
and  teaching  of  their  Master  that  the  Christian  churches 
had  come  to  cherish  toward  the  close  of  the  first  century. 
The  social  ethics  that  they  recognized  as  true,  and  at  first 
attempted  to  realize,  are  embodied  in  these  writings. 

437 


438  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

And  from  this  point  of  view  the  fourth  gospel  is  just  as 
historical  and  valid  evidence  as  the  synoptics.  The  only 
difference  is  that  it  illustrates  the  development  that 
Christianity  had  undergone  in  the  course  of  a  generation 
or  so  after  the  synoptics  were  completed.  And  that 
difference  is  significant,  for  the  fourth  gospel  shows  that 
the  idea  of  the  kingdom  was  already  fading  from  the  con- 
sciousness of  Christians.  The  synoptics  agree  in  repre- 
senting the  mission  of  Jesus  to  be  the  establishment  of 
the  kingdom  —  an  unmistakably  social  ideal ;  the  fourth 
gospel  represents  Jesus  as  coming  into  the  world  to  im- 
part life  to  men,  abundant  life  —  an  individualistic  ideal. 
The  two  methods  of  representing  the  life  and  teaching 
of  Jesus  are  not  irreconcilable,  but  they  are  distinctly 
different. 

Jesus  declared  that  his  kingdom  was  not  of  this  world, 
that  he  came  to  estabhsh  a  spiritual  kingdom,  not  a 
poHtical ;  but  from  all  his  teaching  it  is  plain  that  his 
kingdom  was  to  be  in  this  world.  In  the  beginning  he 
seems  to  have  hoped  for  an  ethical  reformation  of  the 
Jewish  people.  When  disappointed  in  this,  he  centred 
his  hopes  in  a  small  group  of  carefully  picked  disciples, 
whom  he  might  prepare  by  his  instructions  to  continue 
his  work  when  the  enemies  he  had  provoked  should  suc- 
ceed in  cutting  short  his  own  career.  But  there  is  nothing 
to  indicate  any  purpose  of  Jesus  to  found  a  Church.  No- 
body would  ever  conclude  from  the  study  of  the  gospels 
that  he  had  any  intention  whatever  of  establishing  a  spe- 
cial organization  for  the  propagation  of  his  teachings. 
The  only  sayings  that  look  in  that  direction  are  in  the  gos- 
pel of  Matthew,  and  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  that  has 
been  deduced  from  them  must  be  either  a  misunderstand- 


THE  SOCIAL  FAILURE  OF  THE  CHURCH  439 

ing  of  something  that  Jesus  did  say,  or  the  putting  into 
his  mouth  by  a  later  generation  of  something  that  he 
never  said  and  that  never  entered  his  mind.^  He  de- 
sired a  new  social  organism,  not  a  new  organization,  an 
entire  regeneration  of  mankind,  not  the  association  into 
a  close  corporation  of  a  regenerate  few.  All  outward, 
formal  organization  is  foreign  to  his  ideas,  as  the  gospels 
make  him  known  to  us.  It  was  Paul  who  introduced  into 
the  Christian  assemblies  the  synagogue  organization, 
according  to  the  Christian  records  as  we  have  them.^ 

The  consciousness  of  this  social  mission  persisted  in  the 
minds  of  the  followers  of  Jesus  throughout  the  apostolic 
period ;  the  churches  of  the  first  generation  or  two  of 
disciples  retained  much  of  the  spirit  and  aims  of  their 
Master.  Tor,  though  the  apostoHc  letters  mention  the 
kingdom  rarely,  but  speak  often  of  the  church,  the  writers 
had  not  forgotten  the  teachings  of  the  Lord,  and  the 
church  meant  to  them  a  visual  realization  of  the  spiritual 
ideal  of  the  kingdom.  They  saw  in  organization  only 
an  effort  to  give  external  reality  to  an  internal  fact ;  in 
their  view,  the  churches  existed  to  hasten  the  consum- 
mation of  the  kingdom.  And  at  its  beginning,  organized 
Christianity  was  full  of  enthusiasm  and  spiritual  energy. 
The  organization  was  of  the  simplest,  just  enough  to 
insure  social  cohesion,  and  the  new  life  began  at  once  to 
clothe  itself  in  appropriate  forms  and  find  practical  outlet 
in  social  service.     It  was  the  social  element  in  the  new 

'  Nevertheless  it  is  probable  that  he  expected  that  a  community  of  some 
kind  would  be  the  result  of  his  teachings,  and  the  Greek  word  ecdesia  is 
the  equivalent  for  words  used  in  his  native  tongue  to  describe  the  com- 
munity of  Israel,  a  people  called  out  from  the  heathen  and  separated  unto 
Jehovah.  If  Jesus  ever  used  the  word  "church,"  it  must  have  been  in 
that  sense.  *  Acts  14 :  23. 


440  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 


faith  that  at  once  made  the  church  at  Jerusalem  com- 
munistic.    And  yet,   strictly  speaking,    ''conmiunism" 
is  a  misnomer  as  a  description  of  the  facts,  sanctioned 
though  it  is  by  generations  of  usage.     There  was  no 
economic  theory  behind  the  new  conduct,  and  there  was 
no  equal  division  of  property.     Private  property  was 
neither    condemned    nor    approved.     The    disciples    at 
Jerusalem  were  comrades,  face-to-face  with  an  emergency ; 
they  divided  their  goods  as  men  always  divide  in  the  pres- 
ence of  a  common  need  or  a  common  peril.     The  dis- 
ciples were  so  ruled  by  the  spirit  of  Jesus  that  whatever 
each  one  possessed  was  at  the  service  of  his  brother. 
"Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself"  was  not  among 
them  a  mere  form  of  words  —  to  which  men  give  per- 
functory  assent,    followed   by   instant    disobedience  — 
but  was  the  actual  guiding  principle  of  Hfe.     "And  they 
sold  their  possessions  and  goods  and  divided  them  all, 
according  as  any  man  had  need."     The  mention  after- 
ward of  the  cases  of  Ananias  and  Sapphira  and  Barnabas 
makes  it  plain  that  we  are  not  to  understand  the  method 
to  have  been  a  simultaneous  sale  of  all  possessions  and 
an  equal  division  of  the  entire  proceeds,  but  a  sale  from 
time  to  time  of  property  possessed  by  some,  and  distribu- 
tion to  those  in  need  from  the  sums  thus  contributed  to 
the  common  treasury.     Each  member  continued  to  hold 
his  own  property,  but  he  held  it  subject  to  the  needs  of 
the  whole  body  of  disciples.     In  that  sense  they  "had 
all  things  in  common,"  because  they  "were  of  one  heart 
and  soul,"  so  that  "not  one  said  that  aught  of  the  things 
that  he  possessed  was  his  own."     To  such  a  point  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  about  the  stewardship  of  wealth  and 
love  of  the  brother  had  brought  his  first  disciples. 


THE  SOCIAL  FAILURE^OF  THE   CHURCH  441 

This  communistic  principle  was  more  enduring  in  early 
Christianity  than  many  have  realized.  The  Epistle  of 
Barnabas  says,  "Thou  shalt  communicate  in  all  things 
with  thy  neighbor  ;  thou  shalt  not  call  things  thine  own ; 
for  if  ye  are  partakers  in  common  of  things  that  are  in- 
corruptible, how  much  more  of  those  things  that  are  cor- 
ruptible?" Justin  says,  "We  who  were  before  occupied 
by  preference  with  possessions  and  goods,  now  bring  what 
we  have  to  the  community,  and  share  it  with  every  one 
who  has  need."  From  the  later  Fathers  scores  of  sen- 
tences like  the  following  may  be  culled :  "Private  prop- 
erty is  the  root  of  all  strife."  "Possession  in  common, 
that  is,  equal  ownership,  is  the  natural  and  original  order 
of  things."  "Beyond  what  a  man  requires  for  his  abso- 
lute needs,  all  that  he  has  belongs  to  the  poor."  "The 
luxury  of  the  rich  is  the  robbery  of  the  poor."  "What 
the  poor  ask  is  not  thine,  but  their  own."  ^  It  was  be- 
cause sentiments  like  these  survived  in  the  Church,  in 
spite  of  the  apostacy  of  the  institution  as  a  whole,  that 
Monachism  became  so  great  an  institution ;  for  Monach- 
ism  was  Socialism  plus  piety,  as  piety  was  then  conceived. 
Nor  are  we  entirely  dependent  on  Christian  sources  for 
our  knowledge  of  this  matter.  Lucian,  in  his  merry 
satire  on  "Th^  Death  of  Peregrine,"  says :  "It  was  im- 
pressed on  them  by  their  original  lawgiver  that  they  are 
all  brothers  .  .  .  with  the  result  that  they  despise  all 
worldly  goods  alike,  regarding  them  merely  as  common 
property.  Now  an  adroit,  unscrupulous  fellow  who  has 
seen  the  world,  has  only  to  get  among  these  simple  souls 
and  his  fortune  is  made ;  he  plays  with  them."  ^ 

'  For  the  social  teachings  of  the  Fathers,  see  Harnack  and  Hermann, 
"The  Social  Gospel,"  Crown  Theological  Library,  1907,  p.  ^s- 

*  Fowler,  "Works  of  Lucian  of  Samosata,"  Oxford,  1905,  IV :  82,  83. 


442  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

The  early  organization  of  the  churches  shows  plain 
marks  of  the  social  purpose  of  the  new  brotherhood.  The 
democratic  poHty,  recognizing  the  equal  privileges  of  all 
members  of  each  assembly  of  believers,  and  the  entire 
freedom  of  each  assembly  from  external  control,  ap- 
proaches the  perfect  social  liberty  proclaimed  as  ideal  by 
the  anarchist.  There  is  no  domination  of  the  churches, 
even  by  the  apostles,  and  no  conception  of  the  churches 
as  united  in  a  single  corporate  body,  such  as  was  indi- 
cated by  the  epithet  "catholic"  introduced  in  the  second 
century.  No  purer  democracy  has  ever  been  seen,  and 
democracy  is  the  most  entirely  social  of  all  forms  of 
government.  ♦ 

The  first  officers  of  whom  we  have  any  record  were  ap- 
pointed because  of  a  social  need,  and  their  functions  were 
at  first  purely  social.  Because  of  dissatisfaction  with  the 
distribution  from  the  common  fund,  the  apostles  caused 
the  election  of  deacons  to  attend  to  this  matter,  in  order 
that  they  might  be  left  undisturbed  to  their  spiritual 
function  of  teaching.  We  have  no  hint  of  any  enlarge- 
ment of  the  functions  of  deacons,  as  such,  during  the 
apostolic  period ;  for  that  one  of  the  seven  at  Jerusalem, 
Philip,  was  afterwards  conspicuously  useful  as  a  missionary 
was  manifestly  due,  not  to  the  fact  that  he  was  a  deacon, 
but  to  the  fact  that  he  was  Philip.  In  the  second  century, 
when  the  first  simple  organization  began  to  take  on  greater 
complexity,  the  episcopos,  who  became  elevated  above 
his  fellow-presbyters  in  rank  and  authority,  was  important 
for  his  social  rather  than  his  spiritual  functions.  Re- 
ligious instruction  was  given  by  those  who  bore  the  va- 
rious names  of  apostles,  evangelists,  prophets,  teachers ; 
and  the  bishop  was  the  treasurer,  the  almoner,  of  the 


THE  SOCIAL  FAILURE  OF  THE   CHURCH  443 

Church.  Even  so  late  as  the  time  of  Irenaeus,  his  func- 
tions were  administrative,  and  the  teaching  office  was 
discharged  by  the  presbyters.  It  was  not  until  the 
third  century  that  the  bishop  became  recognized  as 
the  chief  teacher  of  the  Church,  his  spiritual  functions 
then  for  the  first  time  becoming  more  important  than 
the  social. 

We  see  the  same  social  features  everywhere  in  the 
apostoHc  churches.  The  agapoe  were  preeminently  social 
meals,  and  it  was  out  of  their  social  character  that  such 
abuses  grew  as  those  so  emphatically  rebuked  by  the 
apostle  Paul  in  his  first  letter  to  the  church  at  Corinth. 
The  meetings  of  the  early  churches  for  worship  were  social, 
if  we  may  judge  from  the  hints  about  them  in  the  same 
letter  —  as  far  as  possible  removed  from  our  formal  and 
solemn  Sunday  services,  and  more  like  a  modern  prayer- 
meeting  than  anything  else  found  in  the  Christian 
churches  of  to-day.  There  was  no  confining  of  prayer 
and  prophecy  and  exhortation  to  appointed  officers,  but 
a  free  participation  on  the  part  of  any  who  might  suppose 
themselves  to  be  qualified  —  a  participation  so  free  that 
Paul  was  obliged  to  warn  the  Corinthians  against  disorder 
in  their  meetings. 

How  has  it  come  about  that  Christian  communities, 
at  first  so  simple  in  organization,  so  flexible  in  ritual,  so 
entirely  social  in  spirit  and  aim,  should  in  so  short  a  time 
have  been  completely  transformed  into  the  complex  or- 
ganization, the  stately  and  inflexible  ritual,  and  the  anti- 
social spirit  of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church  of  the  third  and 
succeeding  centuries  ?  For  it  cannot  be  denied  that  there 
was  a  transformation,  so  complete  that  the  very  recollec- 
tion of  what  the  apostolic  churches  were  was  blotted  out 


444  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

of  the  memories  of  men,  and  has  never  been  recovered. 
It  is  doubtless  true  that  the  Church  never  ventured  for- 
mally to  repudiate  the  teachings  of  him  whom  it  acknowl- 
edged as  its  Founder,  but  it  practically  denied  them,  by 
putting  first  things  second  and  second  things  first.  It 
has  so  overlaid  the  teachings  of  Jesus  with  glosses  and 
interpretations,  as  to  give  them  a  wholly  different  mean- 
ing —  Jesus  himself  was  not  a  Christian,  according  to  the 
tests  that  his  Church  soon  came  to  impose.  No  doubt 
the  full  meaning  of  his  teaching  could  not  be  understood 
until  time  had  given  it  a  better  perspective  and  experience 
had  better  interpreted  it.  But  it  is  also  true  that  all  sub- 
sequent development  of  Christian  ideas  must  be  carried 
back  to  the  teaching  of  Jesus  and  tested  by  that  as  a 
norm.  Jesus  is  the  one  final  authority  on  the  meaning  of 
Christianity,  to  which  all  other  authority  must  be  subor- 
dinated. And  for  this  principle  we  have  his  own  warrant  : 
"Call  no  man  Rabbi ;"  he  alone  is  the  Teacher  who  can 
speak  with  supreme  authority  to  his  disciples.  And  it  is 
one  of  the  most  terrible  ironies  of  history,  undeniable 
by  any  one  who  has  studied  the  origins  and  development 
of  Christianity,  that  the  One  whom  millions  of  Christians 
profess  to  adore  as  their  divine  Founder,  would  for  m.ore 
than  a  thousand  years  have  imperilled  his  life  had  he 
come  again  as  man  and  proclaimed  his  doctrine  in  one  of 
the  churches  dedicated  to  his  Name  ! 

Nowhere  in  history  can  one  find  an  instance  of  more 
complete  perversion  of  an  institution  than  in  the  history 
of  the  Christian  Church.  Nowhere  can  one  find  a  better 
example  of  the  overlaying  of  an  original  simple  teaching 
with  other  doctrines  and  ideals,  so  that  the  first  becomes 
lost  to  sight.     Why  did  such  a  distorted  view  of  God  and 


THE  SOCL\L  F.\ILURE  OF  THE  CHURCH  445 

man  come  to  prevail,  that  now  to  many  earnest  souls  to 
love  the  one  seems  impossible  without  hating  the  other  ? 
How  were  the  social  ethics  of  Jesus  so  travestied  and 
nullified  that,  to  many  honest  minds,  the  Christian  re- 
ligion of  to-day  seems  the  chief  obstacle  to  the  progress 
of  the  brotherhood  of  man,  and  the  Christian  Church 
looms  up  as  the  most  formidable  barrier  against  the 
prevalence  of  social  righteousness  ? 


First  among  the  forces  that  deflected  Christianity  from 
its  original  line  of  progress  was  the  preponderating  in- 
fluence of  the  apostle  Paul.  An  intellect  of  the  first  order, 
a  soul  of  the  noblest  type,  zeal  and  activity  never  sur- 
passed, made  this  man  the  chief  force  in  the  initial  at- 
tempts of  the  new  religion  to  find  itself.  In  the  first  great 
internecine  conflict  of  the  Church  it  would  have  been  an 
incalculable  disaster  if  Paul  had  not  won,  for  in  that  case, 
so  far  as  we  can  see,  Christianity  would  never  have  be- 
come differentiated  from  Judaism ;  it  would  have  strug- 
gled on  for  a  time  as  a  Jewish  sect,  and  then  would  have 
disappeared,  as  did  the  Essenes.  Paul  saved  Christianity 
f-om  perishing  in  the  cradle.  But  it  was  almost  an  equal 
disaster  that  Paul  did  win ;  for,  in  becoming  differentiated 
from  Judaism,  the  new  faith  became  the  Christianity  of 
Paul  rather  than  the  Christianity  of  Jesus.  From  this 
Pyrrhic  victory  nothing  could  have  saved  him  but  to 
have  received  his  training  at  the  feet  of  Jesus,  instead  of 
at  the  feet  of  Gamaliel.  It  was  the  chief,  the  irreparable 
misfortune  of  Paul  not  to  know  Jesus  in  the  flesh,  and  the 
partial  knowledge  of  Jesus  in  the  spirit  that  he  obtained 
was  cast  in  the  moulds  of  Rabbinism.     Or,  to  adopt  the 


446  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

figure  of  Jesus  himself,  the  new  wine  was  put  into  the  old 
bottles,  with  the  result  that  was  foretold. 

There  are  two  current  methods  of  dealing  with  this 
divergence  of  Paul  from  Jesus,  either  of  which  is  supposed 
by  some  to  be  more  ''orthodox"  and  "safe"  than  recog- 
nition of  the  facts.  The  first  has  at  least  the  merit  of 
simplicity ;  it  is  a  flat  denial  that  there  is  any  such  diver- 
gence. But  this  is  becoming  increasingly  difficult,  in- 
deed impossible,  in  the  face  of  the  practically  unanimous 
verdict  of  modern  scholarship.  And  it  is  passing  strange 
that  any  admirer  of  Paul  should  hesitate  to  admit  a  fact 
on  which  he  himself  insists,  of  which  he  almost  boasts. 
He  tells  the  Galatians  that  he  did  not  receive  his  gospel 
from  man,  and  was  under  no  obligations  to  the  other 
apostles.  He  had  been  fourteen  years  a  proclaimer  of  the 
gospel  before  he  had  his  first  conference  with  an  apostle. 
That  he  had  somehow  become  possessed  of  the  main  facts 
regarding  the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus  is  beyond  ques- 
tion, but  he  seems  to  have  taken  pains  to  keep  aloof  from 
those  who  had  been  nearest  to  the  living  Jesus,  lest  his 
independent  commission  from  the  risen  Jesus  should  be 
questioned  or  impugned. 

Nor  is  the  fact  of  divergence  disproved  by  the  allega- 
tion that  the  fundamental  teachings  of  Jesus  can  be  found 
in  the  writings  of  Paul.  This  may  be  conceded,  as  to 
■  most  of  the  things  that  may  be  called  fundamental,  per- 
haps of  all.  But  it  is  quite  as  true  that  much  is  to  be 
found  in  Paul  that  is,  to  put  it  mildly,  additional  to  the 
teaching  of  Jesus ;  and  some  of  this  additional  matter  is 
capable  of  an  interpretation  in  a  sense  irreconcilable  with 
some  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus.  In  point  of  fact.  Christian 
history  shows  that  it  was  so  interpreted,  and  that  such 


THE   SOCIAL  FAILURE  OF  THE   CHURCH  447 

interpretation  made  of  Christianity  something  utterly 
different  from  the  rehgion  that  Jesus  taught  and  exem- 
plified. Only  by  ignoring  a  considerable  part  of  the  teach- 
ings of  both  Paul  and  Jesus  can  they  be  brought  into  ap- 
parent accord.  Such  ignoring  is  an  indispensable  part  of 
the  apologetic  that  maintains  Paul  to  be  the  legitimate 
expounder  of  the  primitive  gospel  of  Jesus,  and  not  the 
preacher  of  "another"  gospel. 

The  second  method  is  less  simple.  It  partially  admits 
a  divergence,  at  least  an  "apparent"  difference,  and 
offers  as  a  means  of  reconciliation  the  doctrine  of  inspira- 
tion. As  Paul  asserted  that  he  had  the  mind  of  the 
Spirit  in  his  teachings,  we  must  believe  his  word  to  be 
equally  authoritative  with  that  of  Jesus,  and  we  must  re- 
ceive this  additional  matter  in  his  writings  as  an  exten- 
sion and  official  interpretation  of  the  gospel,  not  contra- 
dicting the  primitive  message  of  Jesus,  but  complementing 
it.  It  is  the  office  of  exegetical  science  to  interpret  Paul 
and  Jesus  so  that  they  do  agree.  But  this  explanation 
can  hardly  satisfy,  unless  one  is  capable  of  considerable 
intellectual  and  moral  disingenuousness.  For,  according 
to  the  orthodox  Christian  theology,  the  Spirit  of  God 
dwelt  in  Jesus  more  richly  than  was  possible  in  the  case 
of  any  man,  s'nce  Jesus  was  also  Son  of  God ;  and  su- 
perior authority  must  necessarily  attach  to  the  teachings 
of  such  a  divine-human  personality.  And  if  it  be  insisted 
that  inspiration  is  inspiration,  that  any  degree  of  the 
indwelhng  of  the  Holy  Spirit  guarantees  the  truth  of  a 
message,  we  are  once  more  reduced  to  the  old  shifts  so 
repugnant  to  honest  minds,  for  the  reconciling  of  the 
irreconcihible.  To  reproduce  the  conviction  that  there 
is  no  difference  between  the  teachings  of  Jesus  and  those 


448  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

of  Paul  has  become  forever  impossible  to  scholars,  and 
must  now  be  left  to  those  theologians  who  still  go  on 
complacently  building  their  "  systems,"  as  if  nothing 
had  happened  since  the  sixteenth  century. 

But  even  if  such  theoretic  reconcihation  as  now  seems 
impossible  were  entirely  possible,  it  would  not  lessen  to 
any  degree  the  historical  problem,  pressed  upon  us  by  the 
fact  that  Paul  was  accepted  by  the  Church,  not  merely 
as  an  authority  equal  to  Jesus,  but  superior  to  Jesus. 
PauHnism  did  not  supplement,  it  supplanted,  the  prim- 
itive Christianity;  the  later  gospel  completely  eclipsed 
the  earlier.  So  that  the  issue  forced  upon  the  Christian 
world  became,  and  has  ever  since  continued  to  be.  Shall 
we  place  Paul  before  Jesus  as  an  authority  in  religion  ? 
The  cry  "Back  to  Christ"  raised  in  these  latter  years, 
so  infuriating  to  many  orthodox  minds,  has  at  least  this 
significance :  Once  more  it  is  clearly  perceived  that  the 
words  of  Jesus  ought  to  constitute  the  primary  authority 
of  any  who  call  themselves  Christians. 

It  hardly  seems  that  such  a  proposition  should  be  con- 
sidered arguable ;  the  mere  statement  of  it  ought  to  be 
as  conclusive  as  an  axiom  of  mathematics.  Did  Jesus 
come  into  the  world  to  reveal  God,  and  did  he  actually 
make  the  fullest  revelation  of  the  Father  that  man  has 
ever  had ;  or  was  his  revelation  but  partial,  and  was  he 
compelled  to  leave  the  fuller  revelation  to  be  made  by 
Paul?  Did  Jesus  proclaim  a  complete  gospel  of  salva- 
tion, not  exhausting  the  content  of  religious  truth,  but 
teaching  everything  that  it  is  necessary  for  men  to  know 
and  do  in  order  to  become  sons  of  God ;  or  did  he  leave  the 
most  precious  and  essential  part  of  the  gospel  to  be  pro- 
claimed and  expounded  by  Paul  ?     To  those  who  insist  so 


THE  SOCL\L  F-\ILURE   OF  THE   CHURCH  449 

strongly  on  the  authority  of  Paul  that  they  would  follow 
him  rather  than  Jesus,  one  may  quote  the  ironical  words 
of  the  apostle  to  those  who  at  Corinth  would  have  unduly 
exalted  him,  "Was  Paul  crucified  for  you ?  Or  were  you 
baptized  into  the  name  of  Paul  ?" 

The  teaching  of  Paul  was  the  necessary  result,  on  the 
one  hand,  of  his  birth  and  breeding,  and  on  the  other,  of 
his  personal  experience.  He  was  born  and  reared  in  a 
family  of  the  well-to-do  class,  and  never  felt  the  bitter- 
ness of  poverty ;  he  was  educated  in  the  cities  of  Tarsus 
and  Jerusalem,  and  the  peasant  life  was  imknown  to  him. 
He  did  not  realize,  as  Jesus  did,  the  perils  of  wealth  and 
the  sufferings  of  the  poor.  While  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  ethics  of  Paul  were  unfavorable  to  social  evils, 
they  were  a  softening  of  the  principles  of  the  gospel,  and 
mark  the  first  stage  of  departure  from  the  character  that 
Jesus  had  given  to  rehgion  and  ethics.  The  social  ques- 
tions of  his  day  did  not  appeal  to  Paul,  whose  mind  was 
preoccupied  with  intellectual  problems.  Yet  the  uni- 
versalism  of  Jesus,  the  worldwide  brotherhood  that  he 
came  to  establish,  the  oneness  of  Jew  and  Gentile  in  him, 
were  to  none  of  the  immediate  disciples  of  the  Teacher 
so  clear  as  to  this  man  who  had  never  been  a  disciple. 
It  was  not  so  much  that  Paul  failed  to  comprehend  the 
core  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus,  as  that  his  rabbinic  training 
encouraged  too  greatly  a  tendency  native  in  him  to  specu- 
late about  the  hidden  mysteries.  Such  speculations  he 
set  forth  in  his  writings,  with  the  result  that  the  Church 
came  to  identify  those  speculations  with  the  gospel  and 
finally  to  substitute  them  for  the  gospel. 

In  one  important  respect  Paul  was  in  complete  sym- 
pathy with  Jesus :  in  his  opposition  to  Pharisaic  legalism. 

2G 


450  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

He  had  been  bred  in  that  school ;  he  had  sedulously  prac- 
tised its  precepts  and  had  vainly  sought  peace  with  God 
by  deeds  of  law.  Just  as  the  original  gospel  of  Jesus  came 
from  his  consciousness  of  Sonship,  his  relation  to  the 
eternal  God  of  love,  an  unbroken  fellowship  with  the 
Father,  so  the  gospel  of  Paul  was  drawn  from  a  bitter 
*  experience  of  the  impotence  of  the  law  to  give  peace  of 
mind  and  insure  salvation.  Peace  and  assurance  he 
found  through  surrender  to  Jesus  as  Messiah  and  Lord, 
and  he  was  conscious  that  he  had  been  made  a  new  crea- 
tion through  the  power  of  the  divine  Spirit.  He  had  been 
dehvered  from  the  judgment  of  God,  and  Jesus  was  his 
Deliverer;  and  Paul's  whole  theology  was  constructed 
out  of  this  personal  experience. 

For  one  constituted  like  him,  it  was  not  enough  merely 
to  know  that  his  surrender  to  Jesus  had  brought  him 
deliverance  from  sin  and  a  peace  of  mind  to  which  he 
had  hitherto  been  a  stranger.  His  intellect  demanded  a 
theory  to  account  for  his  experience,  and  a  reconciliation 
of  the  ideas  derived  from  his  Jewish  training  with  his  new 
Christian  ideas.  While  the  ground  of  his  hope  and  joy 
continued  to  be  trust  in  a  risen  Christ,  he  found  in  the 
death  of  the  Christ  the  idea  that  was  to  be  the  organizing 
principle  in  his  thinking,  and  the  means  of  reconciling 
into  a  system  ideas  otherwise  diverse.  Death  must 
have  been  essential  to  the  mission  of  a  Messiah,  or  Jesus 
would  not  have  died ;  but  it  could  not  have  been  neces- 
sary for  the  Christ  himself;  therefore,  he  must  have 
experienced  death  on  behalf  of  others.  The  sacrificial 
ritual  of  his  people  had  made  Paul  familiar  with  the  idea 
of  vicarious  death.  Gradually,  therefore,  the  death  of 
Jesus  assumed  in  his  mind  a  wholly  imique  significance 


THE  SOCIAL  FAILURE   OF  THE   CHURCH  45 1 

and  value,  until  the  preaching  of  the  cross  becomes  the 
central  feature  of  his  gospel.  While  it  is  easy  to  trace 
this  process  of  development,  and  even  to  see  that  it  was 
necessitated,  it  is  nevertheless  undeniable  that  it  leads  to 
a  type  of  teaching  so  different  from  anything  that  we  find 
in  the  words  of  Jesus  as  to  be  in  effect  a  totally  new 
gospel.^ 

The  divergence  becomes  the  more  unmistakable  when 
we  consider  the  teaching  of  Jesus  regarding  the  forgive- 
ness of  sins,  in  comparison  with  that  of  Paul.  The  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  is  a  corollar>^  of  his  idea  of  the  divine  Father- 
hood ;  forgiveness  is  the  result  of  the  willingness  of  God 
to  pardon  every  son  who  seeks  his  forgiveness  —  the 
necessary  outflowing  of  his  bountiful,  unmerited  love. 
Jesus  represents  God  as  forgiving  in  precisely  the  way 
that  an  earthly  father  forgives,  freely,  without  condition. 
The  father  of  the  Prodigal  welcomes  his  repentant  boy 
and  grants  him  full  absolution  for  his  misdeeds  without 
a  word  spoken;  and  so,  is  the  evident  implication,  God 
forgives  us.  But  Paul  is  not  content  to  take  the  bare  fact 
of  forgiveness ;  he  must  have  a  theory,  a  doctrine.  And 
he  cannot  free  himself  from  the  shackles  of  that  legalism 
in  which  he  has  been  bred  ;  the  concept  of  a  holy  law  of 
God,  which  cannot  be  broken  with  impunity,  is  so  in- 
grained into  his  mind  that  he  cannot  be  rid  of  it ;  and  he 
must  have  a  forgiveness  that  somehow  consists  with  the 
paying  of  due  penalty  for  violated  law.     And  while  Paul 

'  According  to  the  gospels,  Jesus  conceived  of  his  death  as  the  necessary 
consummation  of  his  work  as  Messiah,  foretold  by  the  Scriptures,  fore- 
shadowed by  the  fate  of  the  prophets,  and  therefore  a  baptism  of  suffering 
from  which  he  could  not  escape.  So  the  disciples  at  first  regarded  the 
subject  (Luke  24 :  26,  46).  The  early  discourses  of  the  Acts  are  to  the 
same  effect  (Acts  2  :  23,  24 ;  3  :  14,  15 ;  4  :  10,  27 ;  5  :  29-31 ;   7  :  52). 


452  SOCIALISM  AND   THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

calls  God  Father,  he  does  not  conceive  of  him  as  Father, 
but  as  Sovereign,  and  as  Sovereign  he  is  the  fountain  of 
law.  Sin  is  not  merely  alienation  from  a  Father;  it  is 
an  indignity  done  to  a  Sovereign's  person  and  a  Sovereign's 
authority ;  and  the  preservation  of  dignity  and  authority 
demands  the  infliction  of  appropriate  penalty.  Forgive- 
ness must  be  compatible  with  the  sanctity  of  law  and  the 
giving  of  penal  satisfaction.  Hence  the  Pauline  doctrine 
of  the  atonement,  the  ground  of  which  is  the  death  of 
Christ,  who  thus  bears  the  penalty  of  man's  sin  and  makes 
satisfaction  to  the  divine  justice.  At  the  cross  mercy 
and  peace  have  met  together,  righteousness  and  love  have 
kissed  each  other.  As  a  result  of  this  atonement  there 
is  a  forensic  process  of  justification,  a  legal  fiction  by 
virtue  of  which  what  Christ  has  done  in  the  sinner's 
behalf  is  transferred  to  the  sinner,  and  he  is  judicially 
acquitted  of  guilt  and  his  penalty  is  remitted.  This  is 
accom.plished  by  "faith,"  belief  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus, 
and  surrender  to  him  as  Lord. 

The  divergence  between  Jesus  and  Paul  is  not  invari- 
able ;  often  the  two  are  in  perfect  accord.  When  Paul 
writes  to  the  Galatians,  "The  fruit  of  the  Spirit  is  love, 
joy,  peace,  long-suffering,  kindness,  goodness,  faithfulness, 
meekness,  self-control,"  he  unquestionably  has  the  mind 
of  Christ  and  is  teaching  the  very  marrow  of  the  primal 
gospel.  But  when  he  writes  to  the  same  Galatians, 
"Christ  redeemed  us  from  the  curse  of  the  law,  having 
become  a  curse  for  us ;  for,  it  is  written.  Cursed  is  every 
one  that  hangs  on  a  tree ;  that  upon  the  gentiles  might 
come  the  blessing  of  Abraham  in  Christ  Jesus,"  he  has 
gone  beyond  the  gospel  into  the  field  of  rabbinic  subtle- 
ties and  theologizing  about  the  forgiveness  of  sins.     So 


THE   SOCIAL   FAILURE  OF  THE   CHURCH  453 

when  he  tells  the  Corinthians  that  love  is  the  greatest 
thing  in  the  world,  greater  than  even  faith  and  hope, 
and  when  he  assures  the  Romans  that  love  is  the  fulfilling 
of  the  whole  law,  he  shows  that  he  can  comprehend  the 
inmost  secret  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus.  But  when  he 
writes  to  the  Romans  that  God  had  set  forth  Jesus  "as 
a  propitiation  through  faith  in  his  blood  .  .  .  that  he 
maybe  justand  the  justifierof  him  who  believes  in  Jesus," 
he  is  stating,  not  the  gospel  that  Jesus  proclaimed,  but  a 
speculative  process  by  which  he  has  made  clear  to  his 
own  mind  the  meaning  of  the  gospel  and  its  relation  to 
his  other  ideas  of  God  and  the  divine  justice. 

This  theologizing  of  Paul  regarding  sin  and  atonement 
and  justification  so  far  fell  in  with  the  speculative  ten- 
dencies of  the  time,  so  satisfied  the  ethical  and  spiritual 
sense  of  Christians  for  many  generations,  that  it  became 
and  has  remained  until  now  the  accepted  orthodox  con- 
tent of  the  gospel.  Such  theologizing  no  longer  satisfies 
an  increasing  number  of  Christians ;  and  they  are  assert- 
ing their  right  to  return  to  the  simpler  teaching  of  Jesus, 
and  beheve  that  God  forgives  sin,  not  because  of  an  elab- 
orate legal  fiction,  but  because  he  is  God.  This  they  hold 
to  be  not  only  a  more  simple  doctrine,  but  a  more  ethical 
and  more  profoundly  spiritual.  Paul's  speculation  satis- 
fied only  so  long  as  men  imagined  that  God  was  altogether 
such  an  one  as  themselves.  When  they  once  grasped  the 
thought  of  Jesus  that  God  is  Hke  none  but  himself,  that 
he  is  the  unique  Being  of  the  universe  in  his  quality 
of  holy  love,  they  ceased  to  find  illumination  of  mind  and 
peace  of  soul  in  theories  that  conceived  God  to  be  no 
more  than  an  alnu'ghty  man,  moved  by  human  motives 
and  subject  to  human  limitations. 


454  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

Jesus  never  attempted  in  his  teaching  to  solve  the  rid- 
dle of  sin ;  he  was  content  to  provide  men  with  a  remedy. 
He  illustrates  certain  forms  of  sin  in  his  parables,  but  he 
takes  it  for  granted  that  men  are  conscious  of  their  aliena- 
tion from  God,  conscious  of  soul-sickness  and  disharmony 
of  spirit,  feeling  the  burden  of  guilt  and  un worthiness,  sen- 
sible of  their  own  impotence  to  escape  from  such  a  con- 
dition, and  knowing  their  greatest  need  to  be  healing  and 
deliverance  and  restoration  to  their  Father's  love.  This 
Jesus  came  to  bring  to  men,  and  he  called  it  salvation, 
eternal  life.  He  proclaimed  himself  to  be  the  Way  and 
the  Life,  and  that  the  process  of  salvation  was  faith  in 
him,  that  is  to  say,  a  trust  or  self-commitment,  involving 
obedience  to  his  law  of  love.  By  such  faith  only  could 
a  man  learn  the  secret  of  the  life  that  Jesus  came  to 
impart,  become  an  imitator  of  him,  learn  from  him  the 
holy  love  of  God,  be  so  brought  into  harmony  with  the 
divine  will  as  to  receive  the  assurance  of  forgiveness  of  his 
sins,  the  inward  peace  that  could  result  only  from  the 
restoration  of  spiritual  harmony  and  deliverance  from 
the  power  of  evil.  Only  so  could  man  ever  come  to  com- 
prehend the  love  of  God  as  Father,  or  learn  to  love  his 
God  with  all  his  heart  and  soul  and  mind  and  strength. 

II 

It  is  the  historical  fact  regarding  the  teaching  of  Paul 
and  its  effect  on  Christian  thought  and  Christian  life  that 
is  here  considered.  The  scope  of  the  discussion  excludes 
alike  apologetic  and  polemic ;  it  calls  for  no  extended 
discussion  of  the  truth  of  Paulinism  per  se,  but  merely  for 
an  evaluation  of  historic  Paulinism,  the  interpretation 
given  to  his  writings  by  the  Church.     BibHcal  theology, 


THE    SOCIAL   FAILURE  OF  THE   CHURCH  455 

as  among  its  most  assured  results,  maintains  that  the 
Church  got  a  diffeient  impression  of  the  teaching  and 
personahty  of  Jesus  from  the  fourth  gospel  from  that 
which  is  conveyed  by  the  synoptists ;  still  another  im- 
pression from  the  so-called  "catholic"  epistles;  and  one 
varying  greatly  from  all  the  others  from  the  epistles  of 
Paul.  And  the  historical  fact  is,  that  it  was  the  Pauline 
view,  as  interpreted  by  the  Fathers,  that  prevailed  and 
made  Christianity  what  it  became  and  has  remained  — 
that  his  influence  is  as  clearly  preponderating  and  over- 
whelming as  was  the  rod  of  Aaron  when  it  swallowed  the 
rods  of  the  Egyptian  sorcerers. 

Not  that  this  was  the  result  of  any  conscious  and  de- 
liberate effort  on  his  part.  Rather  the  contrary.  Had 
Paul  lived  he  would  no  doubt  have  been  vastly  surprised, 
and  as  much  shocked,  to  know  how  completely  he  had 
supplanted  and  thrust  into  the  background  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth, the  Christ  of  God,  to  whom  he  gave  utmost  rever- 
ence and  loyal  service  unto  the  death.  His  training  in 
the  Jewish  schools  gave  him  a  trend  of  thinking  that  made 
it  impossible  for  him  to  appreciate  and  set  forth  the  mis- 
sion of  Jesus  as  Jesus  himself  conceived  it.  His  was  a 
mind  that  exalted  the  theological  above  the  ethical,  the 
future  above  tho  present,  the  kingdom  of  God  in  its  heav- 
enly consummation  above  the  kingdom  of  God  as  a  re- 
generating force  on  earth.  It  would  not  be  just  to  say 
that  Paul  was  careless  about  the  Christian  life.  Nobody 
who  could  write  as  he  wrote  to  the  Galatians  of  the  fruits 
of  the  Spirit  can  be  fairly  charged  with  indifference  to  the 
practical  side  of  Christian  truth.  But  the  relatively  small 
place  occupied  by  ethical  teaching  in  his  writings  docs 
warrant  us  in  saying  that  he  placed  his  main  emphasis 


456  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

on  the  philosophy  of  religion,  on  doctrine  rather  than  on 
life;  not  to  the  exclusion  of  life,  but  to  its  inevitable 
eclipse.  Hence,  while  he  was  not  without  appreciation 
of  the  ethical  teachings  of  Jesus,  his  mental  constitution 
and  training  impelled  him  to  give  most  thought  to  the 
speculative  side  of  religion.  The  preexistence  of  Christ 
in  the  "form"  of  God,  the  nature  of  the  atonement,  the 
forensic  justification  of  the  sinner,  the  real  sanctification 
that  follows,  and  the  ultimate  assurance  of  salvation 
in  the  divine  election  —  questions  like  these  occupy  his 
thought  and  fill  the  larger  place  in  his  writings.  Where 
Jesus  is  content  to  assume  the  fact  of  sin  as  a  universal 
human  experience,  and  point  men  to  a  remedy,  Paul  must 
find  a  historico-philosophical  theory  of  the  origin  of  sin. 
Where  Jesus  is  content  to  teach  the  Providence  of  God, 
extending  to  the  minutest  affairs  of  life,  as  a  justification 
of  men's  trust  in  their  Heavenly  Father,  Paul  is  con- 
strained to  follow  out  the  idea  into  a  doctrine  of  the 
divine  predestination. 

And  this  seed  fell  into  good  soil.  The  predominant 
minds  of  the  Church,  after  the  apostoHc  age  was  well  past, 
proved  to  be  men  trained  in  the  Greek  philosophy,  ac- 
customed to  speculation,  and  delighting  in  it.  Taking 
Paul  as  their  guide,  rather  than  Jesus,  valuing  dogma 
above  ethics,  they  led  the  Church  in  no  long  time  to  be- 
lieve that  theology  was  more  important  than  character, 
that  a  philosophy  of  religion  was  of  more  value  than  a 
Hfe  of  religion,  that  Christianity  was  primarily  a  system  to 
be  believed  if  one  would  be  saved.  And  so,  from  the  sec- 
ond century  onward,  the  Holy  Cathohc  Church  became  an 
organization  whose  cardinal  object  was  the  statement  and 
defence  of  sound  teaching  regarding  Christianity. 


THE  SOCIAL  FMLURE  OF  THE   CHURCH  457 

There  is  no  doubt  that  this  tendency,  which  was  al- 
ready developed,  received  a  great  access  of  energy  from 
the  character  of  some  of  the  teachings  proposed  in  the 
name  of  Christ.  Some  of  the  early  heresies  were  very 
naive  and  crude,  and  it  is  difi&cult  to  comprehend  how 
their  authors  ever  conceived  that  they  could  find  any 
place  in  a  Christian  system.  Still,  the  tide  of  speculation 
once  in  motion,  it  was  natural  that  cross-currents  and 
counter-eddies  should  develop.  Not  all  speculations  would 
start  from  the  same  premises,  or  even  reach  the  same  con- 
clusion from  a  common  starting-point.  That  an  attempt 
to  assimilate  the  Pauline  speculations  with  those  of 
heathen  philosophers  was  inevitable,  follows  from  the 
fact  that  so  many  men  like  Justin  Martyr  were  converted 
to  Christianity  in  middle  life,  or  after  their  education  was 
completed  and  their  mental  habits  established.  While 
the  life  of  such  men  was  profoundly  affected  by  the  gospel, 
they  were  less  affected  in  their  thinking  than  we  are  some- 
times inclined  to  suppose.  And  hence  there  began,  at 
least  as  early  as  Justin's  day,  those  speculations  regard- 
ing the  nature  of  Christ,  and  the  union  of  the  divine  and 
human  in  his  person,  concerning  which  the  Arian  heresy 
and  the  council  of  Nice  give  us  the  first  instance  of  an 
attempt  on  the  part  of  the  Church  to  determine  authori- 
tatively what  should  be  taught  and  believed  by  all  Chris- 
tians. 

Of  course  there  were  heresies  and  heresies.  Some  were 
comparatively  innocuous,  not  affecting  what  were  re- 
garded as  the  fundamentals  ;  others  attacked  points  that 
were  esteemed  vital  to  Christianity.  The  Church  was 
probably  right  in  its  estimate  of  Arianism  as  peculiarly 
dangerous,  since  it  was  a  speculation  inconsistent  with  the 


458  SOCI-\LISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

claim  of  Christianity  to  be  the  final  revelation  of  God's 
nature  and  will,  as  well  as  the  final  word  on  man's  duty. 
Christianity  has  no  permanent  mission,  as  Athanasius 
maintained,  unless  Jesus  the  Christ  was  God  manifest  in 
the  flesh  in  some  unique  sense.  The  speculations  of  Arius 
in  a  manner  compelled  contrary  speculations,  and  forced 
on  the  Church  the  attempt  to  define  the  indefinable. 
And  whatever  objections  may  He  against  the  Nicene 
definition,  it  is  preferable  to  Arianism  in  this  :  it  at  least 
makes  an  effort  to  preserve  the  essential  thing  in  Chris- 
tianity, that  he  who  has  seen  and  known  Jesus  has  known 
and  seen  the  Father.  This  gone,  there  is  no  Christian 
religion  left,  only  a  system  of  altruistic  ethics. 

It  is  not  necessary  for  our  purpose  to  pursue  further 
the  details  of  the  history  of  dogma.  Every  reader  will 
recall  for  himself  how  this  was  but  the  beginning  of  the 
Christological  controversies,  which  were  not  finally 
settled  until  the  close  of  the  seventh  century.  We  see 
how  this  line  of  development  in  the  Church  came  to  divert 
men's  minds  from  the  ethical  side  of  Christianity,  and 
especially  from  the  social  ethics  taught  by  him  who  was 
still  nominally  revered  as  Founder  and  Head  of  the  faith. 
It  may  be  pleaded  by  some  apologist  that  such  a  diver- 
sion was  historically  unavoidable.  One  need  not  be  care- 
ful to  answer,  for  the  point  is  simply  that  it  is  actual.  To 
establish  a  fact  we  need  not  undertake  to  distribute 
blame. 

ni 

Another  influence  was  exceedingly  potent  in  transform- 
ing the  religion  of  Jesus  into  the  Catholic  Christianity 
of  the  second  century,  and  that  was  paganism.  A  host  of 
reHgions  and  religious  philosophies  were  contending  for 


THE   SOCIAL   FAILURE  OF  THE   CHURCH  459 

the  mastery  of  the  Roman  Empire  at  the  close  of  the  first 
century  —  Manichasism,  Gnosticism,  the  cults  of  Isis  and 
Mithra,  and  many  others.  That  Christianity  was  victor 
in  the  contest  is  the  well-known  historical  fact.  The  tradi- 
tional explanation  has  been  that  it  conquered  by  the  power 
of  its  superior  truth,  though  some  have  been  candid  enough 
to  admit  that  imperial  favor  turned  the  scale  at  a  time 
when  the  issue  was  doubtful.  But  the  more  careful  study 
of  comparative  religion,  and  the  more  thorough  research 
into  the  origins  of  Christianity,  have  alike  compelled  the 
conviction  that  religious  s>Ticretism  had  much  to  do  with 
the  triumph  of  Christianity.  The  rehgion  of  Christ,  in 
its  struggle  with  other  faiths,  gradually  adopted  what 
seemed  best  in  them,  and  not  a  little  that  was  second  and 
third  best,  and  its  success  was  in  no  small  measure  due  to 
this  method.  That  this  was  not  so  much  a  deliberately 
adopted  policy,  as  the  unconscious  result  of  an  assimi- 
lative process,  natural  and  indeed  irresistible  under  the 
conditions,  did  not  make  the  result  less  certain. 

One  of  the  most  striking  instances  of  this  syncretism 
is  the  worship  of  the  Virgin,  which,  though  favored  by 
certain  tendencies  that  developed  within  the  Church, 
was  little  less  than  the  grafting  of  the  cult  of  Isis  on  the 
Christian  faith.  Readers  of  classic  literature  know  how 
widespread  and  persistent  this  cult  was  in  the  first  cen- 
turies of  imperial  Rome.  Often  the  authorities  became 
alarmed  at  its  prevalence,  and  persecutions  were  from 
time  to  time  instituted  against  the  devotees  of  Isis,  not 
less  severe  than  the  better-known  persecutions  of  the 
Christians.^     The  Isis  cult  finally  disappeared  from  the 

>  This  was  true  of  other  cults  also.  Livy  gives  a  circumstantial  account 
of  the  excesses  of  the  Bacchanalia  in  Rome  in  186  B.C.,  as  a  result  of  which 


460  SOCIALISM  AND   THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

empire,  not  because  the  laws  were  successful  in  extir- 
pating it,  but  because  the  most  essential  feature  of  the 
cult  was  incorporated  into  Christianity.  That  essential 
feature  was  the  need  felt  by  mankind  for  some  recognition 
in  its  religion  of  the  female  principle  in  the  idea  of  divinity, 
and  the  inculcation  of  the  feminine  virtues  equally  with 
the  masculine,  as  part  of  practical  religion.  With  this  rec- 
ognized in  the  worship  of  the  Virgin,  the  Isis  cult  ceased 
to  have  vitality  enough  to  keep  it  alive.  Christianity 
not  only  adopted  the  principle,  but  much  of  the  nomen- 
clature of  Isis  worship,  and  to  Mary  the  Virgin  were  ap- 
propriated such  phrases  of  the  Isis  worshippers  as  "Mother 
of  God,"  ''Our  Lady,"  ''The  Holy  Lady,"  and  the  like. 
The  progress  of  Christological  ideas  was  profoundly 
affected  by  this  syncretism.  Other  religions  than  the 
Christian  had  their  Trinities;  other  religions  had  their 
Saviours,  together  with  doctrines  of  preexistence  of  the 
Deliverer,  the  virgin  birth,  and  a  resurrection  after  death. 
For  this  reason,  some  have  hastily  leaped  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  Christians  borrowed  these  doctrines  from  other 
religions,  and  that  the  ideas  we  have  been  accustomed  to 
regard  as  uniquely  Christian  are  in  reality  only  a  rehash 
of  Egyptian  and  Babylonian  myths.  It  is  a  superficial 
scholarship  that  maintains  such  a  theory.  A  sounder 
view,  based  on  more  thorough  knowledge,  is  that  there 
was  no  conscious  borrowing  from  other  religions  by  Chris- 
tianity ;  its  chief  features  were  independently  developed 
by  its  own  teachers;  but  there  was  an  unconscious  as- 
similation of  many  parallel  teachings  and  usages  from  the 
other  contending  faiths.     Men  trained  in  these  pagan 

the  consuls  enforced  the  law  against  illicit  cults,  and  many  offenders  were 
put  to  death.     Bk.  XXXIX,  Chap.  VIII  sq. 


THE  SOCIAL   FAILURE   OF  THE   CHURCH  461 

cults  could  not.  at  their  conversion  to  Christianity,  wholly 
divest  themselves  of  ideas  and  custonis  ingrained  into 
them  from  infancy;  and  Fathers  like  Clemens  Alexan- 
drinus,  as  well  as  heretics  like  Montanus,  were  more  pagan 
than  they  suspected. 

The  same  process  is  traceable  in  the  institutions  of 
Christianity.  Other  religions  had  their  sacraments  of 
baptism  and  a  holy  meal,  and  connected  with  them  ideas 
of  magical  efficacy  that  were  adopted  by  Christianity; 
and  thus  the  simple  symbols  of  the  apostolic  time  were 
transformed  into  the  wonder-working  sacraments  of  the 
CathoHc  faith.  The  sacred  festivals  of  the  Church  are 
either  of  demonstrably  heathen  origin,  or  were  greatly 
modified  by  heathen  influence.  The  Christian-Jewish 
passover  feast  had  its  counterpart  in  pagan  celebrations 
of  the  vernal  equinox,  and  many  features  of  the  pagan 
cults  were  made  their  own  by  Christians.  The  decking 
of  the  altars  with  flowers  is  a  usage  of  the  old  pagan  spring 
festivals,  and  the  very  name  Easter  is  a  testimony  to  this 
illicit  marriage  of  heathen  and  Christian  ideas.  The 
Christmas  festival  is  of  so  late  origin  that  w^e  can  trace  its 
progress  in  the  Church,  and  be  absolutely  certain  that 
it  is  merely  a  Christian  adaptation  of  an  ancient  pagan 
festival,  originally  suggested  by  the  winter  solstice  and 
the  joy  of  men  that  the  bonds  of  winter  were  broken  and 
soon  the  genial  summer  would  return.  The  popular 
features  of  the  day  —  the  feasting  and  merry-making,  the 
exchange  of  gifts,  the  legend  of  Santa  Claus  —  are  all 
survivals  of  paganism,  and  have  no  claim  whatever  to  a 
Christian  origin,  though  in  process  of  time  a  Christian 
significance  has  become  attached  to  them. 

How  powerfully  Gnosticism  and  Manichaeism  affected 


462  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

Christianity,  by  securing  the  incorporation  into  its  doc- 
trine and  practice  of  an  ascetic  ideal  that  found  no  coun- 
tenance in  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  and  Httle  recognition 
in  the  teaching  of  Paul,  has  long  been  a  commonplace 
of  historical  studies.  How  the  pagan  revival,  known 
as  Neo-Platonism,  affected  the  Christian  ideas,  has  been 
so  brilliantly  set  forth  by  Harnack  and  other  learned  in- 
vestigators as  to  demand  here  no  more  than  this  word 
of  allusion. 

It  becomes  increasingly  clear,  as  we  study  the  develop- 
ment of  Christianity,  that  in  formulating  the  doctrines 
of  their  religion  and  working  out  its  institutions  and 
settling  the  details  of  its  cult,  the  Christians  of  the  second 
and  third  centuries  did  not  draw  their  materials  only  or 
chiefly  from  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  or  even  from  ac- 
knowledged Christian  documents,  but  from  the  general 
stock  of  religious  ideas,  institutions,  and  customs  then 
prevalent  in  the  Roman  empire.  The  right  or  wrong  of 
this,  whether  it  was  part  of  a  process  of  legitimate  develop- 
ment, or  the  first  stage  of  a  degeneration,  is  not  just  now 
in  question.  The  point  of  view  now  is,  that  such  a  pro- 
cess could  not  go  on  without  a  practical  submergence  of 
the  teachings  of  Jesus  in  this  accumulated  mass  of  ideas 
more  or  less  similar,  more  or  less  reconcilable  with  a  con- 
tinued profession  of  faith  in  him  as  the  supreme  Teacher 
as  well  as  the  Redeemer  of  men.  That  his  ideas  of  human 
relations  and  of  human  society  should  be  so  modified  by 
this  syncretistic  process  as  to  become  finally  unrecog- 
nizable must  be  conceded  to  be  the  inescapable  result. 
That  this  happened  is  certain,  and  that  it  happened 
should  surprise  no  one  who  reads  the  early  history  of 
Christianity. 


THE  SOCI.\L  FAILURE  OF  THE   CHURCH  463 


rv 

A  potent  cause  for  the  deflection  of  Christianity  from 
the  Hne  of  social  regeneration  on  which  it  originally  be- 
gan was  the  fact  that  it  was  compelled  to  struggle  during 
more  than  two  centuries  for  its  very  Hfe.  We  see  the 
marks  of  persecution  already  in  the  later  New  Testament 
writings,  especially  in  the  Apocalypse,  and  the  effect 
of  persecution  becomes  increasingly  evident  in  every 
decade  of  the  second  and  third  centuries.  The  new  re- 
ligion was  put  on  the  defensive,  just  so  soon  as  its  mission- 
ary operations  had  extended  it  throughout  the  Roman 
empire,  and  the  imperial  authorities  had  awakened  to  the 
fact  of  this  wide  extension.  From  their  point  of  view,  the 
new  religion  constituted  a  distinct  danger  to  the  imperial 
power;  it  substituted  allegiance  to  Christ  for  supreme 
allegiance  to  the  emperor  and  the  law.  Its  strict  mono- 
theism made  it  intolerant  of  the  imperial  cult  on  which 
the  state  was  now  relying  to  furnish  a  bond  of  union  be- 
tween nationalities  and  religions  so  widely  separated  and 
discordant  as  those  that  constituted  the  empire. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  we  get  from  the  earhest  Chris- 
tian literature  a  very  inadequate  picture  of  the  Chris- 
tian churches  and  their  environment,  but  some  things  are 
tolerably  plain.  Each  Christian  assembly  of  believers 
stood  in  the  midst  of  a  hostile  community ;  the  pagan 
philosophers  were  coldly  critical ;  the  priests  of  the  pagan 
cults  were  at  first  contemptuous,  then  fearful,  and  always 
opposing ;  a  superstitious  people  were  ever  ready  to 
attribute  disaster  or  calamity  of  any  sort  to  the  anger  of 
the  gods  provoked  by  these  "atheists"  ;  the  authorities 
were  required  by  law  to  suppress  this  illegal  sect,  and 


464  SOCI-\LISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

suspected  conspiracy  in  the  private  meetings.  As  we 
study  this  picturcwe  understand  how  and  why  the  preser- 
vation of  tlie  unity  of  the  organization  came  to  seem  the 
paramount  necessity.  Self-preservation  made  sohdarity 
and  compactness  indispensable.  Driven  to  rely  on  them- 
selves, urged  to  mutual  help  and  protection.  Christians 
soon  became  acutely  conscious  of  the  organized  power 
of  the  empire,  and  began  to  develop  an  equal  perfection 
and  extent  of  organization.  The  scattered  churches 
came  to  self-consciousness  as  one  Catholic  body ;  and  soon 
it  became  e\ddent  that  a  universal  Church  was  pitted 
against  a  universal  secular  power.  In  this  struggle  for 
existence  was  wrought  out  the  strong  ecclesiastical  ma- 
chine, with  its  hierarchy,  its  fixed  canon  of  Scripture,  and 
its  rule  of  faith. 

Unity  of  organization  was,  indeed,  more  insisted  upon 
at  first  than  unity  of  doctrine,  as  the  more  pressing  need. 
The  Ignatian  letters  are  peculiarly  emphatic  in  exhorting 
to  unity  under  the  authority  and  direction  of  the  bishop, 
as  the  prime  necessity  appreciated  by  the  author.  Sep- 
aration from  the  Church  is  the  gravest  fault  of  which  a 
Christian  can  be  guilty;  disobedience  to  the  bishop  is 
only  less  grave.  Such  compactness  of  organization  was 
made  mandatory  by  the  conditions  under  which  the 
Church  found  itself.  The  growth  of  this  institutional 
side  of  Christianity  was  probably  certain  in  any  case.  It 
is  hardly  to  be  expected  that  the  simple  and  incohesive 
organization  of  the  primitive  churches  could  have  been 
permanent ;  tendencies  inherent  in  human  nature,  which 
have  manifested  themselves  in  other  religions,  would  have 
brought  about  greater  complexity.  Nevertheless,  the 
persecutions  furnished  conditions  in  which  institutions 


THE  SOCIAL  FAILURE  OF  THE   CHURCH  465 

grew  as  in  a  hot-bed,  causing  the  development  to  outstrip 
all  that  might  have  been  foreseen.  It  is  easy  to  see  how 
the  turning  of  Christian  activities  into  this  channel  left 
little  energy  for  the  following  out  of  the  social  ideas  of 
the  first  churches.  That  such  a  diversion  was  imperative, 
if  the  Church  was  to  be  preserved,  and  that  it  accom- 
plished its  purpose,  m-aking  Christianity  triumphant  in 
the  long  struggle  with  the  Cassars,  may  do  something 
to  reconcile  us  to  this  distortion  of  our  religion,  but  can 
do  nothing  to  alter  the  fact  that  it  was  distorted. 

But  this  compactness  of  organization,  in  a  sect  that 
professed  supreme  allegiance  to  another  than  the  em- 
peror, was  so  incompatible  with  the  imperial  ideal  that  it 
was  the  less  to  be  tolerated  the  stronger  it  became.  And 
so  persecution  was  increasingly  bitter,  until  it  occurred 
to  an  emperor  more  astute  than  his  predecessors  that  an 
alliance  might  be  possible  between  the  empire  and  the 
Church  —  an  alliance  that  would  never  have  been  pos- 
sible, had  not  the  early  teaching  been  already  practically 
abandoned;  for  a  social  gospel,  allied  to  religious  fer- 
vor, would  have  been  a  menace  to  imperial  despotism 
that  no  expedients  could  have  lessened.  We  m.ay  per- 
haps give  to  Diocletian  the  credit  of  being  the  first  of  the 
Roman  emperors  to  discover  that  Christianity  could  not 
be  destroyed,  but  Constantine  was  the  first  to  see  that 
the  new  religion,  so  far  from  being  destructive  to  the  em- 
pire, might  be  made  one  of  its  chief  pillars.  Considered 
as  a  stroke  of  statesmanship,  the  union  of  Church  and 
State,  begun  by  him  and  completed  by  his  successors, 
has  no  superior  in  the  history  of  politics.  It  placed  at  the 
disposal  of  the  emperors  a  system  of  administration  ad- 
mirably conceived,  and  soon  as  perfectly  developed  in  all 

2H 


466  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

parts  of  the  empire  as  any  ruler  need  have  desired  —  a 
system  that  became  the  more  efficient  as  a  means  of 
despotism  because  through  their  prelates  the  emperor 
was  able  to  control  the  consciences  of  subjects  as  no 
heathen  ruler  had  ever  aspired  to  do. 

This  completed  the  transformation  of  Christianity. 
The  kingdom  that  Jesus  came  to  establish  is  hostile  to 
this  world,  is  endeavoring  to  supplant  and  transform  it, 
and  can  accept  no  terms  from  it  but  unconditional  sur- 
render. But  Constantine  offered  to  make  the  Church 
rich  and  Christians  respectable,  and  the  offer  was  accepted 
with  an  eagerness  that  it  is  not  difficult  to  comprehend, 
even  while  we  deplore  its  results.  The  Church  was  too 
delighted  to  come  out  of  the  cave  into  which  persecution 
had  driven  it,  and  bask  in  the  sunshine  of  imperial  favor, 
to  ask  or  think  about  consequences.  It  gladly  accepted 
what  the  State  had  to  give,  and  before  it  realized  the 
situation  found  itself  compelled  to  do  what  its  patron 
bade.  It  was  not  clear  at  the  first,  as  it  afterward  be- 
came, that  Constantine  as  friend  was  more  dangerous 
to  the  Church  than  Diocletian  as  enemy. 

And  so  we  are  brought  face-to-face  with  one  of  the 
greatest  anomalies  in  history :  the  religion  of  peace  and 
righteousness  and  universal  brotherhood  becomes  in  a 
single  generation  the  pillar  of  despotism  and  the  foe  of 
liberty,  the  apologist  for  every  wickedness  that  may  en- 
trench itself  in  high  places.  The  Church  has,  on  the 
whole,  kept  its  part  of  the  shameful  compact  better  than 
the  State.  It  surrendered  to  the  world  and  devoted 
itself  to  the  task  of  justifying  the  world's  Hfe  —  a  Ufe  that 
in  every  act  and  principle  is  an  absolute  negation  of  the 
teaching  of  Jesus.     At  the  same  time  it  impudently  con- 


THE  SOCIAL  FAILURE  OF  THE  CHURCH  467 

tends  that  the  worldly  life  is  in  exact  conformity  to  the 
teaching  of  Jesus,  and  has  scrupled  at  no  falsehood  or 
forgery  necessary  to  make  out  its  contention.  There 
is  little  injustice  or  exaggeration  in  Tolstoi's  summary : 
"The  Church  so  transformed  Christ's  teaching  to  suit  the 
world  that  there  no  longer  resulted  from  it  any  demands, 
and  that  men  could  go  on  living  as  they  had  hitherto 
lived.  The  Church  }delded  to  the  world,  and,  having 
yielded,  followed  it.  The  world  did  everything  that  it 
chose,  and  left  the  Church  to  hobble  after  as  well  as  it 
could  with  its  teachings  about  the  meaning  of  life.  The 
world  led  its  life,  contrary  to  Christ  in  each  and  ever}- 
point,  and  the  Church  contrived  subtleties  to  demon- 
strate that  in  li\'ing  contrary  to  Christ's  law  men  were 
living  in  harmony  with  it.  And  it  ended  in  the  world 
.begiiming  not  only  to  justify  such  a  life,  but  even  to  assert 
that  this  was  precisely  what  corresponded  to  Christ's 
teaching."  ^ 

There  could  be  but  one  consequence  of  such  imion 
between  Church  and  State :  the  complete  disappearance 
of  social  ideas  from  the  programme  of  the  Church  and 
even  from  its  teaching.  Socialism  and  imperialism  are 
incompatible,  but  not  more  so  than  Socialism  and  sacer- 
dotalism ;  and  from  the  time  of  Constantine  the  sacer- 
dotal spirit  became  rampant  in  the  Church.  Socialism 
means  pure  democracy ;  sacerdotalism  means  pure  aris- 
tocracy. A  Church  that  makes  the  sacerdotal  idea  part 
and  parcel  of  Christianity  is  the  necessary  foe  of  all  real 
social  progress.  Its  true  affinities  are  with  the  privileged 
classes,  always  against  the  people.  It  may  be  called  a 
"democratic"  Church,  on  the  ground  that  a  large  num- 
1  "What  I  Believe,"  pp.  247,  248. 


468  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

ber  of  poor  people  are  found  in  it,  but  in  organization  and 
spirit  it  is  fundamentally  hostile  to  democracy.  The 
poor  are  in  the  Catholic  Church,  but  they  are  not  of  it; 
the  doctrine  and  ritual  and  discipline  of  the  Church  are 
settled  by  its  hierarchy,  and  the  people  have  nothing  left 
them  but  obedience.  The  instinct  of  the  working  people 
has  not  deceived  them,  when  they  have  recognized  the 
Church  that  has  resulted  from  Constantine's  policy  as 
their  enemy.  The  encyclical  of  Pope  Leo  XIII  against 
Socialism,  issued  in  May,  1891,  was  only  the  outspoken 
definition  of  an  attitude  that  had  long  before  been  taken 
by  the  Church.  And  the  vast  majority  of  European 
working-men  have  had  no  experience  of  any  other  Church 
than  the  Roman,  no  knowledge  of  any  other  Christianity 
than  that  taught  by  the  Roman  Church.  They  have  been 
quite  justified  in  turning  against  the  Christianity  taught 
by  a  Church  that  pubhcly  proclaims  itself  their  uncom- 
promising foe,  that  uses  all  its  powers  for  the  upholding 
of  the  present  iniquitous  social  order. 

From  the  time  of  Constantine,  therefore,  the  ecclesias- 
tical organization  that  constituted  the  corporate  Church 
has  remained  on  the  side  of  wealth,  on  the  side  of  privilege, 
on  the  side  of  organized  injustice.  The  social  mission 
of  Christianity  has  been  completely  forgotten,  or,  if  not 
forgotten,  ignored.  To  undertake  anything  like  a  work 
of  social  regeneration,  and  still  be  the  apologist  and  de- 
fender of  imperialism,  was  manifestly  impossible.  Most 
of  the  clergy  had  the  grace  not  to  attempt  such  crass  hy- 
pocrisy. Had  the  ideals  of  Jesus  remained  alive  in  what 
called  itself  his  Church,  it  is  manifest  that  every  day  must 
have  witnessed  their  conscious  violation,  but  it  is  only 
too  plain  that  the  ideals  had  perished.    Henceforth,  Chris- 


THE   SOCL^L  FAILURE  OF  THE  CHURCH  469 

tianity  becomes  an  ameliorative  force  in  the  world,  rather 
than  a  regenerative.  It  proceeded  to  accomplish  many- 
things  for  the  benefit  of  men,  but  they  were  mere  surface 
poultices.  The  deep  ulcer  of  society  remained  unhealed. 
What  the  world  needed  was  a  transformation,  radical, 
complete,  such  as  the  original  Christianity  was  fitted  to 
accomplish ;  what  the  Church  now  began  to  do,  all  that 
it  was  now  fitted  to  accomplish,  was  to  make  social  abuses 
a  little  less  intolerable. 


Persecution  did  more  than  modify  Christian  institu- 
tions ;  it  had  an  immediate  effect  on  the  entire  spirit  of 
the  Christian  brotherhood.  Men  had  so  little  to  expect 
in  this  world  that  they  came  to  do  most  of  their  thinking 
in  terms  of  the  world  to  come.  The  intensity  of  belief 
in  the  immediate  coming  of  Christ  visibly  grows  weaker  in 
the  early  Christian  writings,  while  the  conception  of  the 
significance  of  the  future  life  correspondingly  enlarges. 
Hope  of  the  consummation  of  the  kingdom  during  their 
lifetime  was  finally  abandoned  by  all  Christians,  and  their 
hopes  became  fixed  on  the  hereafter.  The  doctrine  of 
the  second  coming,  which  filled  so  large  a  place  in  the 
literature  of  the  apostolic  and  sub-apostolic  age,  has  by 
the  close  of  the  second  century  become  a  department  of 
eschatology.  It  is  no  longer  a  present  reahty,  it  is  not 
even  a  definite  hope ;  it  belongs  to  heaven,  not  to  this 
world.  This  gives  an  air  of  unreality  to  much  of  the 
Christian  writings.  We  are  accustomed  to  do  so  much 
of  our  thinking  in  terms  of  this  life  and  the  present  world 
that  it  is  difllcult  to  read  the  literature  of  the  early  Chris- 
tians sympathetically,  or  get  the  view  of  the  writers. 


470  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

They  so  emphasize  the  spiritual  side  of  religion  as  often 
to  forget  that  there  is  a  material  side  to  it,  from  which 
the  spiritual  can  be  separated  only  at  the  cost  of  reality. 
They  no  longer  saw  the  spiritual  in  the  material,  no  longer 
sought  the  material  through  the  spiritual.  The  kingdom 
had  no  reality  for  them ;  its  realization  was  not  to  be 
sought  for  or  expected  in  this  world.  Men  were  there- 
fore exhorted,  not  to  seek  a  remedy  for  social  ills,  but  to 
bear  them  patiently,  in  the  hope  of  redress  and  reward 
hereafter.  The  greatest  work  of  theology  that  the  an- 
cient Church  produced,  Augustine's  "City  of  God," 
marks  the  complete  passing  of  the  ideal  of  Jesus. 

But  the  transition  to  wealth  and  worldly  power  which 
is  the  striking  feature  in  the  history  of  Christianity  from 
Constantine  onward,  gave  new  energy  to  a  reaction  from 
the  material  to  the  spiritual  that  had  begun  to  manifest 
itself  in  the  later  part  of  the  age  of  persecution.  Men 
and  women  who  revolted  from  a  Church  that  was  becom- 
ing so  unlike  its  early  ideal  were  unfortunately  led  into 
a  wrong  alternative  by  certain  ideas  that  were  derived 
from  pagan  sources  rather  than  from  the  teachings  of 
Jesus.  A  belief  in  the  essential  evil  of  matter,  borrowed 
from  Oriental  religions,  became  gradually  incorporated 
with  Christian  ideas,  and  while  it  did  not  perceptibly 
modify  the  formal  theology  of  the  Church,  it  profoundly 
affected  the  everyday  thinking  of  all  Christians.  To  the 
evil  influence  of  matter  was  attributed  the  origin  and  con- 
tinuance of  sin ;  and  the  practical  corollary  was  that  the 
body  is  the  source  of  all  evil  desire  and  unethical  conduct 
in  man.  The  practice  of  asceticism  directly  followed. 
Since  the  bodily  appetites  and  desires  are  the  root  of 
sinful  conduct,  said  men,  let  us  by  discipline  of  the  body 


THE  SOCIAL  FAILURE  OF  THE  CHURCH  471 

reduce  moral  evil  to  a  minimum,  and  make  the  attain- 
ment of  holiness  by  so  much  the  less  difficult.  The  in- 
stitutions of  monachism  were  only  the  visible  embodiment 
of  an  ideal  that  substantially  the  whole  Church  came  to 
cherish,  of  the  most  effective  way,  if  not  the  only  way, 
to  hve  on  a  higher  spiritual  plane. 

During  many  centuries  it  was  taught  without  contra- 
diction that  the  highest  character  could  not  be  reached  in 
the  home,  or  in  ordinary  secular  vocations,  that  a  truly 
religious  hfe  could  beHved  only  in  the  cloister.  Men  and 
women  withdrew  themselves  from  their  homes  and  call- 
ings, abandoning  with  heartless  cruelty  those  dependent  on 
their  love,  that  they  might  save  their  own  miserable  souls 
by  prayer  and  mortification  of  the  flesh  in  some  monastery. 
That  was  to  be  reUgious.  To  live  in  the  shelter  of  the 
home  was  a  lower  life  tolerated  by  God  in  those  who  were 
too  weak  to  choose  the  better  part.  How  foreign  such 
an  ideal  of  the  Christian  hfe  is  to  the  teachings  of  Jesus 
there  is  no  occasion  to  point  out  to  any  reader  of  the  gos- 
pels. Yet  it  is  the  ideal  still  cherished  by  millions  who 
call  themselves  Christians.  The  world  has  been  right 
in  concluding  that  this  ideal  is  worthless,  that  a  religion 
of  this  kind  has  no  social  value,  but  rather  is  full  of  pos- 
sibilities of  social  injury.  The  Christianity  that  will  not 
bear  the  test  of  the  home,  the  shop,  the  market-place,  the 
field,  is  not  the  religion  of  Jesus. 

Monachism  must  be  granted  the  praise  of  consistency 
and  thoroughness.  What  the  majority  of  men  attempted 
to  achieve  by  spasmodic  fastings,  and  occasional  austeri- 
ties, the  monks  sought  by  a  more  logical  and  rigorous 
method.  Monachism  can  be  effectively  criticised  only 
by  the  denial  of  its  premise.     It  is  essentially  anti-social 


472  SOCIALISM   AND   THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

and  anti-Christian,  because  its  aim  is  selfish,  its  chief 
object  being  the  promotion  of  holiness  and  securing  the 
ultimate  salvation  of  those  who  engage  in  it ;  whereas 
Jesus  exhorts  to  the  unselfish  life,  the  rescue  of  the  other 
man,  the  love  of  neighbor.  Monachism  showed  its  un- 
social character  by  withdrawing  from  the  world  the  best 
and  purest,  or,  at  least,  those  who  had  the  strongest 
impulse  towards  goodness  and  purity,  and  left  the  race 
to  be  propagated  and  the  business  of  the  world  to  be 
carried  on  by  the  worst.  That  the  ethical  deterioration 
of  Europe  during  the  mediaeval  period  was  no  greater  is 
the  real  thing  to  wonder  at,  not  that  it  was  so  great. 

VI 

The  social  failure  of  the  Church  has  been  emphasized 
by  Protestantism,  which  has  thus  far  been  as  completely 
obhvious  of  the  social  teachings  of  Jesus  as  the  Roman 
Church.  This  almost  inevitably  resulted  from  the  con- 
ditions of  its  origin.  Protestantism  is  part  of  the  general 
revolt  manifest  in  many  forms  throughout  the  whole  of 
Europe  from  the  fifteenth  century  onward,  against  the 
system  of  absolute  despotism  in  Church  and  State,  that 
had  been  built  up  and  maintained  during  the  medieval 
period.  That  system  at  length  broke  down.  Men  re- 
fused to  remain  slaves  and  insisted  on  hberty  —  liberty 
to  think,  liberty  to  worship  God,  liberty  to  govern  them- 
selves, liberty  to  work  and  enjoy  the  fruits  of  their  labor. 
The  pendulum  now  swung  in  the  opposite  direction. 
For  ages  the  thinkers  among  men  had  been  finding  argu- 
ments and  excuses  for  absolutism ;  they  now  began  to  pro- 
claim, defend,  and  expound  the  principle  of  individualism. 
The  denial  by  the  Church  of  liberty  in  religion  led  the 


THE  SOCIAL  FAILURE  OF  THE   CHURCH  473 

Reformers  into  the  most  extreme  assertion  of  the  rights  of 
the  individual  soul,  and  opened  the  way  for  endless  sec- 
tarian divisions  and  conflicts. 

What  is  most  surprising  to  the  student  of  the  Refor- 
mation is  that  so  little  was  accomplished  towards  the 
rediscovery  of  Jesus  and  his  teaching.  But  there  is  an 
explanation  of  a  sort,  if  not  entirely  satisfactory,  in 
the  environment.  Protestantism  had  the  experience  of 
Christianity  in  the  first  centuries,  a  fierce  struggle  during 
several  generations  for  the  mere  right  to  exist.  To  con- 
quer freedom  of  thought,  freedom  of  worship,  was  its  first 
task,  and  to  do  this  required  three  hundred  years.  Re- 
ligious hberty  was  practically  unknown  until  the  nine- 
teenth century ;  and  until  it  had  been  won  men  were  not 
ready  to  raise  or  to  heed  the  cry,  "Back  to  Christ."  It  is 
difiicult  for  us  who  rejoice  in  this  heritage  to  realize  how 
short  is  the  time  in  which  it  has  been  possessed  by  men 
anywhere,  and  that  it  is  not  yet  fully  possessed  except  in 
America. 

But  aside  from  these  outward  conditions,  the  inward 
impulse  of  the  Reformation  was  not  directly  favorable  to 
the  recovery  of  the  social  teachings  of  Jesus.  Protestant- 
ism owes  its  characteristic  form,  and  a  trend  that  has 
lasted  until  now,  to  two  factors :  a  personal,  religious  ex- 
perience of  Luther,  and  the  revival  of  Augustine's  the- 
ology by  Calvin.  Both  were  based  on  the  teaching  of 
Paul,  not  that  of  Jesus. 

Luther's  experience,  though  not  unique,  was  most 
dramatic  and  impressive.  It  was  the  natural  result  of 
his  idea  of  God  —  an  idea  not  uncommon  at  the  time,  but 
nurtured  to  full  growth  in  his  mind  by  parental  severity 
in  his  youth,     God  was  to  him,  not  a  Father  who  loved 


474  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

all  men  with  an  everlasting  holy  love,  but  a  Judge,  who 
was  full  of  wrath  against  men  for  their  sins,  holding  them 
sternly  to  account  for  satisfaction  to  the  uttermost. 
Conscious  of  sin,  he  vainly  sought  forgiveness  and  peace 
by  the  ways  the  Church  recommended  :  confession,  pen- 
ance, good  works.  He  rushed  into  the  monastery  in  a 
panic  of  fear,  and  by  severities  that  well-nigh  cost  him  his 
life  attempted  to  earn  salvation,  but  found  his  agony  of 
soul  increased  rather  than  diminished.  From  Augustine 
and  Paul,  but  especially  from  Paul,  he  got  the  idea  of  for- 
giveness of  sin  through  an  act  of  faith,  in  virtue  of  which 
the  merits  of  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  were  transferred  to 
him.  This  gave  him  peace  of  mind,  and  this  gradually 
became  to  him  the  whole  of  salvation.  Justification  by 
faith,  after  this  experience  and  as  a  natural  result  of  it, 
seemed  to  Luther  the  core  of  the  gospel ;  and  to  have  this 
assurance  of  forgiveness  was  to  be  a  Christian ;  this  was 
to  be  saved. 

No  idea  of  the  kingdom  of  God  entered  the  mind  of 
Luther.  Regeneration  as  a  means  of  entrance  into  this 
kingdom  was  not  in  all  his  thoughts.  Here  he  was  misled 
by  the  ancient  Catholic  teaching  and  never  escaped  from 
its  error;  regeneration  was  for  him  accomplished  in  bap- 
tism. The  new  Hfe  that  is  the  essence  of  the  teaching 
of  Jesus  was  merely  the  result  of  this  experience  of  for- 
giveness. Luther  could  speak  lightly  of  sin,  because,  if 
one  had  faith,  his  sin  was  always  forgiven.  He  never 
arrived  at  an  adequate  notion  of  the  ethical  obligation 
that  rests  on  a  follower  of  Jesus.  In  all  his  thinking,  the 
Christian  life  and  the  Christian  character  fell  into  the 
category  of  second  things.  It  is  impossible  for  the  be- 
liever to  live  without  sin,  and  Luther  at  times  implied 


THE   SOCIAL   FMLURE   OF  THE    CHURCH  475 

that  he  need  not  try  very  hard,  because  he  can  always 
have  recourse  to  faith  and  forgiveness.  Hence  arose  a 
well-founded  complaint  that  the  Reformation  was  at  first 
distinctly  unfavorable  to  ethical  conduct ;  and  it  was 
not  until  the  gaps  in  Luther's  teaching  were  filled  in  at 
the  behest  of  experience,  that  the  reproach  was  removed. 
Melanchthon  agreed  with  Luther,  as  he  showed  in  his 
"Loci  Communes,"  in  which  he  declared  that  the  gospel 
is  "the  promise  of  grace  or  the  forgiveness  of  sins  through 
Christ."  This  describes  Paul's  teaching,  not  that  of 
Jesus,  whose  Good  News  to  men  was  the  proclamation 
of  the  kingdom  of  God,  w4th  rebirth  of  the  individual  as 
the  condition  of  entrance  and  the  reorganization  of  society 
as  its  result. 

The  one  party  during  the  Reformation  struggle  that 
had  some  apprehension  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus,  that  made 
some  attempt  to  proclaim  anew  his  teachings  and  to 
realize  his  ideals,  the  Anabaptists,  were  overwhelmed 
with  obloquy  and  persecuted  to  exterm.ination.  It  is 
quite  true  that  they  were  not  a  homogeneous  party,  and 
that  some  among  them  gave  Just  cause  of  oflence  by 
their  fanaticism,  their  appeal  to  the  sword,  and  their  im- 
morality. But  these  were  not  the  real  reasons  w^h}^  the 
Anabaptists  were  so  reprobated  by  the  reformers,  so  perse- 
cuted by  all  governments  —  these  were  merely  the  plaus- 
ible excuses  for  the  relentless  bitterness  with  which  they 
were  suppressed.  The  Anabaptists  were  despised  and 
rejected  for  the  same  reason  that  Jesus  was  rejected  and 
despised  —  they  announced  a  gospel  that,  if  accepted, 
would  have  required  and  produced  a  reorganization  of 
society  on  the  principle  of  human  brotherhood.  Six- 
teenth-century Europe  was  no  more  ready  for  such  a  gos- 


476  SOCIALISM  AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

pel  than  twentieth-century  Europe  is.  Sixteenth-century 
Europe  was  not  ready  even  to  permit  the  question  to  be 
discussed,  or  to  tolerate  the  existence  of  a  party  pledged 
to  the  propagation  of  such  ideas.  Four  centuries  have 
resulted  in  so  much  of  progress  as  this :  Europe  is  now 
listening  to  discussion  of  social  reorganization,  albeit  re- 
luctantly, and  for  the  most  part  still  returning  no  answer 
but  an  angry  negative. 

The  theology  of  the  Reformers,  and  especially  of  Cal- 
vin, was  possible  only  to  men  who  had  been  bred  under 
aristocracy  and  monarchy.  From  the  ideas  thus  made 
habitual  to  them,  not  even  their  tendency  to  magnify 
the  individual  could  free  them.  The  only  theology  they 
could  conceive  was  a  theology  in  which  individualism 
could  be  reconciled  with  the  divine  Sovereignty.  They 
thought  of  God  as  an  absolute,  despotic  ruler  of  a  world 
that  he  had  created  "for  his  own  glory"  —  a  Being  with 
the  united  attributes  of  Pope  and  Emperor,  raised  to  in- 
finitude. This  God  had  decided  of  his  good  pleasure, 
that  is,  in  a  wholly  arbitrary  manner,  to  bestow  the  bless- 
ings of  salvation  on  a  small  number  of  persons,  selected 
without  any  reference  to  what  they  were  or  might  do ; 
and  these  should  be  called  by  irresistible  grace,  and  should 
in  the  life  to  come  share  with  God  in  his  "glory."  The 
gospel  that  Jesus  proclaimed  was  Good  News  for  the 
whole  world ;  the  gospel  according  to  Calvin  was  Good 
News  for  the  elect  only  —  to  all  others  it  was  a  message 
of  wrath  and  condemnation.  The  one  was  democracy 
in  religion,  the  other  aristocracy.  It  is  no  wonder  that 
Calvinism  has  done  no  more  for  the  social  uplift  of  hu- 
manity than  Catholicism  —  it  could  not  well  do  less. 

We  are  at  no  great  loss,  therefore,  to  explain  why  the 


THE  SOCIAL  FAILURE  OF  THE  CHURCH  477 

Church  has  so  long  neglected  the  social  mission  with 
which  the  followers  of  Jesus  are  charged  by  the  teachings 
of  their  Master.  It  would  have  been  nothing  short  of  a 
miracle  if  the  Church  had  kept  alive  the  ideals  of  Jesus 
during  the  ages  of  darkness  and  violence  through  which 
it  has  passed ;  and,  if  it  had  kept  the  ideals  alive,  it  is  hard 
to  see  what  it  could  have  effectively  wrought  towards  their 
attainment,  though  it  might  have  avoided  some  of  its 
own  deadly  perversions.  Now  that  the  Church  is  slowly 
coming  to  a  new  consciousness  of  the  meaning  of  Chris- 
tianity as  taught  by  its  Founder,  it  is  natural  that  there 
should  be  at  first  hesitancy  and  divided  counsels.  Chris- 
tendom is  still  seeing  men  as  trees  walking,  but  it  is  begin- 
ning to  see  —  that  is  the  hopeful  fact,  and  out  of  such 
sight  much  may  come. 

The  most  serious  obstacle  as  yet  to  united  and  effective 
action  is  that  the  Church  does  not  now  see  clearly,  does 
not  yet  recognize  the  absolute  need  of  social  reconstruc- 
tion, thinks  that  present  institutions  can  be  somehow 
patched  up  and  made  to  serve  longer.  It  has  all  along 
been  treating  the  symptoms  of  social  disorder,  not  under- 
standing that  society  is  suffering  from  a  constitutional 
disease.  It  has  been  shown  many  times  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  a  collective  Christian  conscience,  and  that 
when  it  is  once  thoroughly  roused,  there  is  certain  to  be 
"something  doing."  But  with  regard  to  social  evils, 
this  collective  Christian  conscience  has  never  been  so 
roused  as  to  go  to  the  root  of  the  matter.  This  is  be- 
cause of  the  confused  ideas  that  have  been  entertained 
as  to  the  real  difficulty.  The  conscience  is  sound,  the 
intelhgence  is  at  fault.  A  process  of  education  is  neces- 
sary  in   order  to  secure    enlightened    action  and  give 


478  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

effective  direction  to  the  healthy  ethical  sentiment  of 
Christians.  And  to  contribute  to  this  education  is  the 
pressing  duty  of  every  man  who  has  come  to  see  clearly 
the  truth  as  to  social  evils.  It  was  once  thought  that 
the  office  of  religion  was  to  fit  men  for  heaven ;  men  now 
know  that  no  man  is  fitted  for  the  heavenly  life  until  he 
is  fitted  to  live  here  among  his  fellows  —  the  man  pre- 
pared to  live  best  is  the  man  best  prepared  to  die.  It  is 
not  by  shirking  one's  duties  on  earth  that  one  becomes 
fitted  to  enjoy  bHss  above.  To  live  this  Hfe  aright,  to 
make  the  noblest  and  best  of  it,  is  man's  whole  present 
concern.  And  men  can  live  this  life  aright,  can  realize 
their  highest  possibilities,  only  by  accepting  and  follow- 
ing the  teachings  of  Jesus. 

We  come  then  to  this  :  the  teachings  of  Jesus  are  utterly 
incompatible  with  the  present  social  order,  and  his  Church 
has  entirely  failed  to  accomplish  the  social  revolution  that 
he  anticipated  as  a  result  of  the  adoption  of  his  precepts 
as  a  rule  of  hfe.  What  then  ?  Shall  we  abandon  all  at- 
tempt to  live  by  the  precepts  of  Jesus,  or  shall  we  try 
as  never  before  to  reduce  them  to  practice?  Jesus  or 
the  Church,  the  present  social  order  or  human  Brother- 
hood —  which  ?  Shall  we  seriously  make  the  attempt 
to  reconstitute  the  world  according  to  the  ideas  of  Jesus, 
or  shall  we  content  ourselves  with  things  as  they  are,  and 
go  on  saying  that  the  ideas  of  Jesus  are  theoretically 
admirable,  but  quite  impracticable  ?  Whence  came  this 
conviction  that  Christianity  must  be  denaturized  before 
it  is  fit  for  use  ?  How  can  anything  be  pronounced  im- 
practicable until  it  has  been  tried  ?  And  no  man  can 
point  out  a  time  or  place  or  society  that  ever  gave  the 
ethics  of  Jesus  a  fair  trial. 


THE   SOCIAL  FAILURE  OF  THE   CHURCH  479 

If  the  ethics  of  Jesus  are  impracticable  for  the  world  as 
it  is,  such  a  fact  is  a  condemnation,  not  of  the  ethics,  but 
of  the  condition  of  the  world.  His  ethics  may  be  prac- 
ticable ethics  for  such  a  world  as  should  exist,  a  society 
ruled  by  the  spirit  of  mutual  brotherhood  and  good  will. 
The  world  has  always  had  its  own  Beatitudes :  Blessed 
are  the  proud ;  Blessed  are  the  self-complacent ;  Blessed 
are  the  self-assertive ;  Blessed  are  they  that  hunger  and 
thirst  after  pleasure ;  Blessed  are  the  cruel ;  Blessed  are 
the  lustful ;  Blessed  are  the  violent  and  revengeful. 
Since  Jesus  deliberately  challenged  and  reversed  such 
ethics,  it  is  not  wonderful  that  the  world  pronounces  his 
impracticable.  The  wonder  is  that  the  professed  dis- 
ciples of  Jesus  should  accept  the  world's  verdict  and  re- 
fuse to  try  their  Master's  principles.  Of  what  use  will  it 
be  to  cherish  orthodox  beliefs  as  to  the  divinity  of  Christ, 
and  his  identity  of  essence  with  the  Father,  and  at  the 
same  time  contemptuously  to  reject  his  authority  as 
teacher  and  guide  ?  What  avails  it  that  Christians 
vociferate,  ''Lord,  Lord,"  and  yet  do  none  of  his  com- 
mandments ? 


XII 


THE  ATTITUDE  OF  CHURCHES  AND   MINISTERS 
TO   SOCIAL  QUESTIONS 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Peabody,  The  Approach  to  the  Social  Question.    New  York,  1909. 
Mathews,  The  Church  and  the  Changing  Order.    New  York,  1907. 

,  The  Gospel  and  the  Modern  Man.     New  York,  1910. 

Ely,  Social  Aspects  of  Christianity.     New  York,  1889. 
Rauschenbusch,  Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis.    New  York, 

1907. 
Campbell,  Christianity  and  the  Social  Order.    New  York,  1907. 
Stelzle,  The  Church  and  Labor.    Boston,  1910. 
,  Christianity's  Storm  Center :  A  Study  of  the  Modern  City. 

New  York,  1906. 
Brown,  The  Social  Message  of  the  Modern  Pulpit.    New  York, 

1906. 
Hodges  and  Reichert,  The  Administration  of  an  Institutional 

Church.     New  York,  1906. 
Thompson,  The  Churches  and  the  Wage  Earners.    New  York, 

1909. 
Spargo,  The  Spiritual  Significance  of  Modern  Socialism.    New 

York,  1908. 


XII 


THE   ATTITUDE   OF  CHURCHES   AND  MINISTERS   TO   SOCIAL 

QUESTIONS 

So  numerous  are  the  programmes  offered  for  the  re- 
generation of  society,  so  confusing  in  their  contradictions 
of  principle,  and  so  irreconcilable  in  their  details,  that  it 
often  seems  to  the  bewildered  mind  as  if  the  safest  thing 
would  be  to  do  nothing.  But  this  is  really  the  most  dan- 
gerous thing  of  all.  The  Church  that  adopts  the  Fabian 
pohcy  is  lost ;  it  is  a  maxim  of  war  that  a  defensive  cam- 
paign invariably  ends  in  defeat.  But  action  does  not 
necessarily  involve  a  choice  between  these  conflicting  pro- 
posals. On  the  contrary,  effective  action  may  be  taken 
with  a  strong  conviction  that  no  programme,  made  in 
Germany  or  elsewhere,  for  the  complete  and  immediate 
solution  of  the  social  problem,  is  worthy  of  a  moment's 
serious  consideration  by  a  serious  person. 


What  attitude,  then,  is  the  Christian  Church  to  assume 

towards  proposals  for  social  regeneration?    What  is  a 

preacher  to  do  towards  solving  the  social  problems  of  his 

time  ?     No  questions  could  be  more  practical ;  few  could 

be  more  urgent ;  and  some  would  think,  none  can  be  more 

difficult.     But  really,  nothing  could  be  more  simple,  if  we 

first  have  fully  settled  in  our  minds  what  is  the  mission 

of  a  Christian  Church  and  a  Christian  preacher  in  this 

world. 

483 


484  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

A  Christian  Church  exists  to  hasten  the  coming  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  among  men,  the  developm.ent  of  that 
new  social  order  that  will  inevitably  result  from  the  pres- 
ence in  the  world  of  regenerated  men,  living  in  accordance 
with  the  rule  of  love  that  Jesus  taught.  The  Church 
is  not  chiefly  a  hospital  to  which  men  are  to  take  their 
spiritual  diseases  to  be  cured,  though  it  must  do  a  work 
of  healing ;  nor  is  it  simply  a  parlor  to  which  people  may 
resort  to  have  their  souls  manicured,  though  spiritual 
culture  is  a  part  of  its  mission ;  it  is  first  of  all  and  last 
of  all  a  propaganda  of  the  kingdom  idea  and  of  the  king- 
dom life.  If  it  fails  here,  it  fails  altogether.  The  Church 
has  no  other  legitimate  purpose  or  aim  than  this.  What- 
ever promises  to  promote  the  coming  of  the  kingdom 
ought  to  have  its  sympathy,  ought  to  be  eagerly  seized 
and  made  tributary  to  this  single  end.  Whatever  relates 
in  no  way  to  the  progress  of  the  kingdom,  however  desir- 
able it  may  be  in  itself,  is  entirely  outside  the  function  of 
the  Church.  Here  is  a  simple  touchstone,  by  which  every 
question  of  the  duty  of  the  Church  may  be  tested ;  and 
the  differences  of  opinion  that  will  result  from  the  honest 
application  of  this  test  will  be  both  few  and  unimportant. 

How  far  are  Churches  to-day  using  their  spiritual  re- 
sources and  their  manifold  opportunities  to  promote  the 
coming  of  the  kingdom?  Are  they  not  cumbered  with 
too  many  cares  regarding  the  building  up  of  the  Church 
itself,  the  maintaining  and  perpetuating  of  the  mere  or- 
ganization, which  has  no  value  save  as  a  means  to  the 
great  end  ?  Is  there  not  far  too  much  sectarian  activity 
and  sectarian  jealousy,  and  far  too  little  zeal  for  the  king- 
dom ?  What  Church,  what  denomination,  can  honestly 
say  that  it  is  free  from  this  sin,  and  who  will  believe  it  if 


THE  ATTITUDE  TO   SOCIAL  QUESTIONS  485 

it  does  say  so  ?  May  we  not  almost  say  that  the  Church, 
with  its  sacraments  and  its  creeds  and  its  liturgies,  has 
done  its  utmost  to  shut  out  altogether  the  kingdom  of 
God's  love,  to  forget  its  divine  mission  to  hasten  the  com- 
ing of  the  kingdom,  and  fallen  to  glorifying  itself  ?  That 
it  has  not  quite  succeeded  is  perhaps  the  most  convincing 
proof  that  God's  love  is  invincible  and  that  the  Church 
has  a  divine  mission.  President  Hyde,  of  Bowdoin,  not 
long  ago  said,  "A  Church  that  has  been  reduced  to  a  mere 
preaching  station,  and  a  repository  of  traditions,  a  per- 
former of  rites  and  ceremonies,  is  not  far  from  its  inevit- 
able extinction."  And  he  might  have  added,  if  the 
Church  has  sunk  to  the  level  of  a  mere  social  club,  its  case 
is  no  better. 

Christianity  has  a  message  for  the  age,  but  for  the  most 
part  the  Church  and  the  pulpit  are  not  giving  the  age 
this  message.  The  Church  maintains  a  splendid  ideal 
of  the  kingdom,  but  only  as  an  ideal,  something  too  spir- 
itual to  be  expected  in  this  hfe,  a  hope  for  the  world  to 
come,  and  as  to  this  world  it  winks  at  all  injustice  and 
iniquity.  To  the  demand  for  a  practical  Christianity, 
that  will  make  a  reahty  of  the  empty  words  "brother- 
hood" and  "service,"  the  Church  still  for  the  most  part 
returns  a  dogged  Non  possumus.  It  will  be  vain  for  the 
Church  to  profess  belief  in  the  Jesus  of  the  gospels,  if  by 
its  conduct  it  continues  to  deny  the  gospel  of  Jesus.  The 
piety  that  confesses  Christ  with  the  lips  and  crucifies  him 
every  day  in  the  person  of  his  "little  ones"  will  be  hghtly 
esteemed  by  a  cynical  world.  "Beware  of  the  leaven  of 
the  Pharisees  "  was  the  warning  of  Jesus  to  his  disciples ; 
and  Phariseeism  is  to-day,  as  it  was  in  the  time  of  the 
great  Teacher,  his  chief  enemy  and  the  unrelenting  foe  of 


486  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

his  gospel.  The  Church  is  to-day  in  large  part  a  collec- 
tion of  people  who  thank  God  that  they  are  not  as  others 
—  even  as  this  socialist !  The  indixTerent  priest  and  the 
hard-hearted  Levite  still  throng  the  highways,  but  to 
many  a  man  who  has  fallen  among  robbers  and  has  been 
bruised  and  beaten  and  left  half  dead  no  good  Samaritan 
comes  with  his  oil  and  wine.  The  Church  is  too  busy 
holding  conventions  and  saving  the  heathen  to  attend  to 
such  small  matters  at  its  doors. 

Shall  we  wonder  that  this  profession  of  loyalty  to 
Christ  by  a  Church  that  persistently  disregards  the  social 
teachings  of  Jesus,  and  reverently  bows  the  knee  to  Mam- 
mon, is  greeted  only  by  the  scornful  incredulity  of  the 
world  ?  It  was  authoritatively  stated  a  short  time  ago 
that  Mr.  Asquith's  temperance  bill  was  defeated  in  par- 
liament through  the  opposition  of  clergymen  who  had 
invested  their  savings  in  brewery  stock,  the  profits  of 
which  might  have  been  lessened  by  the  bill.  At  about 
the  same  time,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  publicly  ex- 
plained that  he  worked  seventeen  hours  a  day,  and  had 
no  time  left  for  the  forming  of  an  opinion  on  the  labor 
problem.  Whereto  Mr.  Keir  Hardie  made  a  reply,  as 
unanswerable  as  it  was  stinging,  that  *'a  religion  which 
demands  seventeen  hours  a  day  for  organization  and 
leaves  no  time  for  a  single  thought  about  starving  and 
despairing  men  and  women  and  children  has  no  message 
for  this  age."  But  that  is  England,  and  an  established 
Church,  and  of  course  there  is  nothing  like  that  in  the 
free  churches  of  America  ! 

Men  may  surely  be  pardoned  for  thinking  that  what 
does  not  stand  openly  and  strongly  for  justice  and  free- 
dom and  social  righteousness  cannot  be  of  God  and  the 


THE  "ATTITUDE  TO  SOCL\L  QUESTIONS  487 

truth.  The  Church  is  judged  by  the  company  it  keeps. 
And  that  company  is  the  company  of  the  rich  and  power- 
ful, the  class  that  has  created  and  maintains  all  forms  of 
social  unrighteousness,  and  now  claims  a  vested  interest 
in  their  survival.  Some  of  our  captains  of  industry  have 
no  scruples  against  deahng  in  pitch,  but  are  fastidious 
about  keeping  their  hands  clean.  As  Lady  Macbeth  said 
of  her  lord,  they  "would  not  play  false,  and  yet  would 
wrongly  win."  Not  virtuous  at  heart,  they  yet  sedu- 
lously preserve  the  appearance  of  virtue.  They  hberally 
support  the  Church,  and  all  rehgious  and  philanthropic 
institutions,  and  thereby  virtually  control  them.  The 
millionnaire  robber  does  not  serve  God  for  naught ;  he 
goes  to  church  that  he  may  not  go  to  jail.  He  seriously 
believes  that  "the  more  you  put  in,  the  more  you  will 
take  out."  It  is  a  sound  investment ;  for,  as  he  views  it, 
rehgion  is  an  excellent  sort  of  insurance,  good  for  both 
worlds,  and  not  costly. 

What  is  the  function  of  a  Christian  preacher  ?  It  is 
to  be  God's  prophet.  He  is  not  a  mere  orator  on  all  kinds 
of  religious  topics.  He  is  not  a  teacher  of  theology.  He 
is  not  a  lecturer  on  sociology.  He  does  not  occupy  a  ly- 
ceum  platform,  on  which  he  is  at  liberty  to  discourse  to 
whoever  will  Hsten  on  everything  knowable  and  several 
other  things.  He  occupies  a  pulpit,  in  whichhe  is  Christ's 
ambassador,  and  his  mission  is  to  beseech  men  in  Christ's 
stead,  "Be  ye  reconciled  to  God."  To  make  known  to 
men  the  truth  that  God  has  revealed  to  him  is  his  first 
duty.  To  teach  men  that  God  is  a  Being  of  holy  love, 
and  to  strive  to  bring  men  into  moral  fellowship  with 
God,  is  the  practical  side  of  his  work.  He  knows,  or 
should  know,  that  to  get  men  right  with  God  is  to  get 


488  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

them  right  with  one  another;  and  that,  until  they  are 
right  with  God,  they  can  never  be  really  right  with  one 
another ;  but  also,  that  until  they  are  right  with  one  an- 
other, they  are  not,  and  can  never  be,  right  with  God. 
The  two  are  one  and  inseparable,  now  and  forever.  If 
the  preacher  faithfully  proclaims  the  gospel  with  which 
he  has  been  intrusted,  he  will  offer  the  world  the  most 
effective  cure,  the  only  effective  cure,  for  all  social  ills. 
But  it  must  be  the  gospel  of  Jesus,  his  whole  gospel. 
Preachers  are  frequently  exhorted  to  preach  "the  simple 
gospel,"  but  that  phrase  is  usually  heard  from  the  lips 
of  simple  people.  The  gospel  is  not  simple  but  com- 
plex. Its  principles  are  indeed  simple;  they  can  be 
comprehended  by  a  child;  but  their  appKcation  is  as 
multifarious  as  the  compHcated  concerns  of  modern 
Kfe,  and  the  preacher  has  to  do  with  every  one  of 
these  applications. 

It  is  no  part  of  the  Christian  preacher's  mission,  there- 
fore, to  preach  SociaHsm  or  any  other  "ism."  Nor  is  it 
his  function  to  preach  against  Socialism.  He  moves  in  a 
different  plane ;  he  has  another  and  a  larger  work  to  do. 
All  "isms"  are,  for  the  preacher,  errors.  They  are  the 
worst  heresies  of  which  he  can  be  guilty.  That  is  because 
every  "ism"  is  the  narrow  and  fanatical  assertion,  the 
undue  exaggeration,  of  something  that,  held  in  its  right 
proportions,  might  be  a  truth,  but  in  any  case  not  truth 
which  it  is  the  preacher's  business  to  proclaim.  That  is 
of  sufficient  importance  to  be  said  a  second  time :  Let  the 
preacher  always  remember  that,  even  if  they  be  true, 
"isms"  are  not  for  him.  Larger  truth  has  been  intrusted 
to  him,  a  greater  work  is  before  him  to  do ;  he  cannot  stick 
too  closely  to  his  proper  function,  and  if  that  function 


THE   ATTITUDE  TO   SOCIAL  QUESTIONS  489 

seems  to  him  sometimes  to  be  narrow,  let  him  realize 
that  it  becomes  thereby  the  more  intense  and  can  supply 
his  ministry  the  greater  moral  voltage. 

Has  the  preacher  been  more  faithful  to  his  mission  than 
the  Church  to  hers?  "And  it  shall  be,  like  people,  Hke 
priest."  Look  in  the  themes  advertised  in  the  daily  press 
by  the  ministers  of  any  of  our  cities,  and  the  reports  of 
sermons  preached,  and  then  say  how  far  the  minister  of 
to-day  remembers  that  he  is  God's  prophet,  Christ's  am- 
bassador. He  has  too  often  forgotten  that  the  great  need 
of  the  world  is  to  know  God,  and  to  be  brought  into  har- 
mony with  the  infinite  heart  of  love  that  beats  at  the  cen- 
tre of  this  universe.  ''God  is  an  unnecessary  hypothe- 
sis," said  Laplace.  "My  heart  and  my  flesh  crieth  out 
for  the  living  God,"  said  the  Psalmist.  "O  God,  thou 
hast  made  us  for  thyself,  and  our  hearts  are  restless  till 
they  rest  in  thee,"  said  Augustine.  The  Hebrew  poet 
and  the  theologian  of  Hippo  have  better  expressed  the 
judgment,  have  more  accurately  voiced  the  cry  of  uni- 
versal humanity,  than  the  great  mathematician.  It  is 
still  the  fool  who  says  in  his  heart,  "No  God." 

The  preacher  need  have  no  fear  that  his  occupation  is 
soon  to  be  taken  from  him  by  the  prophets  of  Socialism. 
Some  of  them  are  confident  enough  of  this  result.  Bebel 
boastfully  declares:  "Religion  will  not  be  abolished,  or 
God  dethroned  [so  good  of  him  !]....  Without  attack 
of  force  or  suppression  of  opinion  of  any  kind,  religion 
will  of  itself  vanish."  '  The  prediction  has  a  very  famil- 
iarsound.  Did  not  Voltaire  predict  something  of  thatsort 
in  the  eighteenth  century  ?  Yes,  indeed  ;  he  thought  that 
to  overthrow  Christianity  only  five  or  six  philosophers 
1  "  Women  and  Socialism,"  p.  437. 


490  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

who  understood  one  another  were  necessary,  and  in  one 
of  his  expansive  moments  he  gave  the  Christian  faith  ten 
years  more  of  existence.  Bebel  is  wiser  and  sets  no  date. 
Christianity  has  survived  many  such  predictions.  And 
yet,  we  may  consider  it  certain  that  if  it  finally  proves 
worthless  to  the  world,  turns  aside  from  its  great  mission 
to  other  ends,  it  will  vanish.  Only  that  which  is  perma- 
nently valuable  remains  permanently. 

Those  who  expect  to  see  a  transformation  of  society 
without  the  influence  of  religion  show  a  profound  ig- 
norance alike  of  history  and  of  human  nature.  One  has 
read  the  story  of  the  past  to  little  purpose  if  his  reading 
has  not  taught  him  that  religion  unites  the  social  group 
with  a  bond  stronger  than  blood  or  language,  as  has  often 
been  shown  when  a  difference  in  religion  has  rent  asunder 
a  nation,  a  tribe,  or  a  family.  That  this,  the  strongest 
force  in  the  world  hitherto,  is  disappearing  or  likely  to 
disappear,  is  the  least  credible  of  all  prophecies.  Some 
socialists  are  wise  enough  to  see  this,  and,  having  lost 
faith  in  the  Church,  are  trying  to  find  a  religion  for  them- 
selves in  their  socialistic  theories.  "SociaHsm  is  at  once 
a  science  and  a  religion,"  says  Liebknecht ;  "in  its  appeals 
to  the  feeling  and  the  conscience,  it  has  the  entire  force 
of  Christianity ;  in  its  appeal  to  the  mind,  it  has  all  the 
strength  of  science."  Such  words  could  be  written  only 
by  one  who  has  never  felt  the  appeal  of  Christianity, 
never  heard  the  voice 

Sa>dng,  "0  heart  that  I  made,  a  heart  beats  here  ! 
Face,  my  hands  fashioned,  see  it  in  myself ! 
Thou  hast  no  power  nor  mayst  conceive  of  mine, 
But  love  I  gave  thee,  with  myself  to  love, 
And  thou  must  love  me  who  died  for  thee. " 


THE  ATTITUDE  TO   SOCT\L  QUESTIONS  491 

But  religion  is  to  be  distinguished  from  its  institutions. 
It  is  possible  that  the  world  will  be  saved,  that  it  must  be 
saved,  apart  from  historic  Christianity.  The  unethical 
religiosity  that  calls  itself  by  that  name  has  no  salvatory 
value.  Jesus  taught  that  the  test  of  institutions  is  their 
capacity  for  social  service,  ''The  Sabbath  was  made  for 
man,  not  man  for  the  Sabbath."  The  Church  must  sus- 
tain this  test  triumphantly,  if  it  is  to  survive ;  if  it  can- 
not save,  it  must  go.  And  it  must  save  in  a  larger  sense 
than  the  mere  rescue  of  an  individual  here  and  there. 
It  must  save  society.  It  is  the  business  of  the  followers 
of  Christ,  not  only  to  save  sinners,  but  to  prevent  the 
regular  and  incessant  manufacture  of  sinners.  Believing 
with  their  Master  that  this  is  God's  world,  they  must  also 
believe  with  him  that  just  because  it  is  God's  world,  injus- 
tice and  violence  and  greed  and  impurity  are  to  give  place 
to  love  and  peace  and  brotherhood  and  righteousness. 

More  than  once  in  the  preceding  discussions  the  ne- 
cessity of  regeneration  has  been  mentioned,  without  any 
attempt  to  explain  what  was  meant  by  that  term.  It 
means  everywhere  in  this  book  just  plain,  old-fashioned 
regeneration,  a  radical  change  of  heart,  of  motive,  of 
nature,  a  change  that  can  only  be  described  as  a  new 
birth  and  can  be  ascribed  only  to  the  Spirit  of  God  as 
cause.  But,  some  reader  may  be  asking,  has  not  modern 
psychology  thrown  new  light  on  this  change,  removed  it 
from  the  realm  of  the  mysterious  and  supernatural,  and 
brought  it  wholly  within  the  realm  of  natural  law?  Is 
what  used  to  be  called  regeneration  anything  more  than  a 
psychological  process  that  may  be  fully  accounted  for  as  a 
culmination  of  religious  influences,  which  at  a  given  time 
produce  their  legitimate  effect  in  a  way  fully  explicable, 


492  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

like  other  less  extraordinary  psychological  phenomena? 
Psychology  has  indeed  thrown  much  valuable  light  on 
regeneration,  so  that  we  comprehend  the  nature  and  con- 
comitants of  the  change  better  than  formerly,  but  it  has 
not  explained  the  vital  part  of  the  process  —  the  complete 
and  often  sudden  change  of  moral  character.  That  part 
of  the  process  which  is  purely  psychic  —  conviction  of 
sin,  and  the  sudden  transition  to  peace  and  joy,  commonly 
called  an  "experience"  — ■  is  made  much  clearer  by  psy- 
chological investigation.  But  very  little  light  has  yet 
been  thrown  on  such  ethical  transformations  as  are  related 
in  Mr.  Harold  Begbie's  "Twice-born  Men."  The  psy- 
chological "experience"  is  but  too  common  without  the 
ethical  change ;  yet  in  all  ages,  from  Saul  of  Tarsus  to 
Jerry  McAuley,  there  have  been  marvellous  transforma- 
tions of  character  for  which  psychology  affords  no  ex- 
planation ;  and  they  have  never  been  wrought  save  by 
the  power  of  Jesus  and  his  teaching.  Modern  psychology 
is  as  dumb  before  this  marvel  as  the  philosophy  of  the 
past  has  been.  And  transformations  as  real,  though  not 
so  dramatic  and  striking  as  those  related  by  Mr.  Begbie, 
are  within  the  knowledge  of  every  Christian ;  for,  if  he 
has  not  experienced  such  a  sudden  moral  renovation 
himself,  he  has  observed  more  than  one  such  case  iri  com- 
munities where  he  has  lived. 

n 

The  first  and  most  practical  duty  of  both  churches  and 
preachers  is  to  get  a  more  intelligent  and  sympathetic 
comprehension  of  the  social  problems  of  our  day.  Many 
Christians  are  not  yet  aware  that  there  are  any  social 
problems,  still  more  are  not  yet  certain  that  the  Church 


THE   ATTITUDE  TO  SOCIAL  QUESTIONS  493 

and  the  ministry  have  any  duty  with  regard  to  such  prob- 
lems. They  are  living  in  some  past  or  future  Golden  Age 
of  society  and  religion,  dreaming  perhaps  of  a  restoration 
of  apostolic  Christianity.  We  can  never  have  the  apos- 
toUc  Christianity  again,  because  we  can  never  again  have 
the  apostles  and  the  conditions  of  their  age —  fortunately 
we  never  can  !  "The  mill  will  never  grind  again  with 
water  that  is  past."  The  world  moves  forward,  not  back- 
ward, and  a  man  has  begun  to  die  when  he  has  begun  to 
live  in  the  past.  The  institution  that  has  "a  great  future 
behind  it  "  is  doomed.  If  the  Church  cannot  prove  its 
capacity  to  live  in  the  present  and  for  the  future,  it  has 
ceased  to  be  of  any  real  value  to  the  world,  and  must 
perish  like  any  other  effete  institution.  We  must  come 
as  Christians  to  consciousness  of  our  social  environment, 
realize  that  the  old  individualism  is  as  dead  as  feudalism ; 
and  that  a  spirit  and  method  that  fitted  social  facts  of 
two  hundred  years  ago  cannot  be  successfully  related  to 
present  conditions. 

New  occasions  teach  new  duties ;  Time  makes  ancient  good 

uncouth ; 
They  must  upward  still,  and   onward,  who  would  keep 

abreast  of  Truth. 

Only  by  study  both  intelligent  and  sympathetic  shall 
we  succeed  in  getting  the  right  point  of  view,  in  seeing 
things  in  their  true  perspective,  which  is  the  prime  con- 
dition of  mental  sanity.  To  study  unsympathetically  or 
with  little  intelligence  is  to  see  things  out  of  perspective, 
distorted,  untrue,  fatally  deceptive.  Ministers  whose 
sympathy  overbears  their  intelligence  become,  on  the 
one  hand  rash  and  fanatical,  reversing  the  conduct  of 


494  SOCIALISM   AND  THE   ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

Balaam  and  cursing  where  they  fain  would  bless ;  or  they 
become  cowardly,  shrinking  in  dismay  from  an  agitation 
that  they  do  not  understand  and  can,  therefore,  only 
fear.  Those  who  study  with  intelligence  but  without 
sympathy  become  cold  and  barren  theorists,  whom  no- 
body hears  with  patience  or  takes  seriously.  But  to  study 
with  equi-balanced  intelligence  and  sympathy  means 
that  one  must  not  identify  himself  with  any  group  or  take 
an  active  part  in  social  agitation.  It  is  not  merely  wiser 
for  the  Church  and  the  preacher  to  keep  outside  the  whirl- 
pool of  class  strifes ;  they  can  perform  their  proper  func- 
tion only  by  so  doing.  They  are  to  be  teachers  and  guides, 
not  combatants.  Their  voice  is  ever  to  be  raised  in  favor 
of  justice  and  mercy  and  love,  but  it  is  theirs  to  imitate 
their  Master  in  refusing  to  be  judge  of  actual  controversies. 

This  is  not  cowardly  evasion  of  responsibility;  this 
is  not  fear  to  incur  danger ;  it  is  resolute  insistence  on 
doing  one's  own  proper  work,  and  declining  to  be  tempted 
into  side  issues  by  plausible  considerations.  Judgment 
is  not  the  function  of  Church  and  preacher,  but  education 
and  training.  Prophets  of  God  and  teachers  of  the  world 
in  righteousness,  both  by  precept  and  example,  is  what 
Christians  are  called  to  be  and  do,  and  the  world  will  re- 
spect them  the  more,  not  the  less,  if  to  all  invitations  to 
engage  in  other  occupations  they  return  the  answer  of 
Nehemiah  to  Sanballat,  "I  am  doing  a  great  work,  so 
that  I  cannot  come  down ;  why  should  the  work  cease, 
whilst  I  leave  it  and  come  down  to  you?" 

It  is  always  a  good  rule  to  "do  the  next  thing."  Few 
of  us  have  to  go  to  seek  duties ;  the  providence  of  God 
thrusts  them  upon  us  quite  as  fast  as  we  are  prepared  for 
them.     To  a  certain  extent,  opportunism  is  the  condition 


THE   ATTITUDE   TO  SOCI.\L  QUESTIONS  495 

of  success.  Not  an  opportunism  that  disavows  all  guid- 
ance by  principles,  and  takes  the  line  of  least  resistance 
as  conditions  develop,  no,  not  even  if  through  all  resulting 
sinuosities  of  conduct  the  one  goal  be  kept  ever  in  sight 
and  some  progress  toward  it  be  continually  making.  But 
an  opportunism  that  recognizes  the  stone  wall  of  certain 
fact,  instead  of  butting  one's  head  against  it ;  an  oppor- 
tunism that  comprehends  that  while  principles  are  un- 
changing methods  may  well  be  flexible.  Much  effort  by 
the  Church  and  preachers  fails  of  any  immediate  and 
visible  result,  whatever  it  may  effect  at  some  time  in  the 
future,  because  of  an  uncompromising  adherence  to  one 
method,  under  the  delusion  that  this  is  adherence  to 
principle.  Abstract  ethical  rules  are  seldom  applicable 
to  concrete  conditions  in  the  same  way  that  mathemat- 
ical rules  are  applied,  because  ethics  have  to  do  with 
those  variable  things,  motive  and  conduct.  The  chief 
error  made  by  churches  and  preachers  with  regard  to 
social  questions  is  insistence  on  the  ethically  ideal,  with- 
out consideration  of  the  ethically  practicable.  We  should 
always  insist  on  the  ethically  ideal,  in  the  sphere  of  the 
ideal,  but  with  clear  vision  recognize  the  ethically  prac- 
ticable in  the  sphere  of  the  practical. 

Before  churches  or  preachers  commit  themselves  to  a 
course  of  practical  conduct,  it  is  imperative  that  they  ask 
themselves  this  question :  Is  it  rationally  possible  to 
accomplish  this  thing,  in  this  way,  at  this  time  ?  How 
many  failures  and  blunders  would  be  avoided  if  this  were 
oftener  done.  But,  it  may  be  asked,  should  the  impos- 
sible never  be  attempted  ?  Does  not  our  Master  bid  us 
attempt  much  that  is  rationally  impossible  ?  There  can 
be  no  question  that  the  world  would  be  incalculably 


496  SOCIALISM   AND   THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

poorer  to-day  if  there  had  not  been  men  willing  to  lead 
forlorn  hopes,  to  face  all  but  certain  defeat ;  and  that  such 
will  always  be  the  case  cannot  be  doubted.  But  let 
us  clear  our  eyes,  and  know  what  we  are  about.  Are  we 
seeking  a  practical  success,  or  are  we  knowingly  following 
the  truth  at  the  cost  of  martyrdom  ?  The  man  who  will 
not  flinch  from  duty,  whatever  the  consequences,  is  wholly 
admirable,  but  he  does  not  deceive  himself  by  looking  for 
success ;  he  faces  disaster  or  death,  and  expects  nothing 
else.  But  the  man  who  rushes  bhndly  into  a  conflict, 
without  once  looking  at  the  forces  arrayed  against  him, 
or  calculating  the  chances  of  victory  or  defeat,  is  not  a 
brave  man,  as  he  doubtless  fancies  himself  to  be,  but 
merely  the  common  or  garden  variety  of  fool.  And  oh, 
in  how  many  gardens  does  he  grow  and  bloom  ! 

Since  the  teaching  of  Jesus  was  so  greatly  concerned 
with  men's  social  relations,  if  the  Christian  preacher  is 
faithful  to  his  Master  his  message  must  be  preeminently 
a  social  message,  and  the  mission  of  the  Church  must  be 
at  bottom  a  social  mission.  Salvation  begins  with  the 
rescue  of  the  individual  man  from  sin  and  misery,  the 
impartation  to  him  of  a  new  life,  so  that  he  at  once  gets 
a  new  point  of  view  and  no  longer  looks  solely  upon  his 
own  rights  and  concerns,  but  upon  those  of  his  neighbor. 
This  results  in  giving  him  a  new  social  status  and  impos- 
ing on  him  new  social  duties.  Until  the  preacher  has 
learned  to  conceive  his  religion  and  calling  in  this  way, 
he  is  quite  unprepared  for  his  work ;  when  he  has  learned 
so  to  conceive  of  work  and  religion,  this  new  idea  will  in- 
spire his  message  and  determine  his  activities.  He  will 
see  that  his  charge,  as  Christ's  ambassador  to  beseech 
men,  "Be  ye  reconciled  to  God,"  is  not  a  merely  individual 


THE  ATTITUDE  TO  SOCIAL  QUESTIONS  497 

matter,  that  he  is  aiming  at  something  more  than  the 
salvation  of  individuals.  His  mission  is  to  bring  society 
and  God  together  :  and  though  he  can  do  this  only  through 
bringing  one  man  at  a  time  to  the  knowledge  and  love 
and  service  of  God,  he  is  to  keep  the  larger  result  ever  in 
mind.  It  will  make  an  immense  difference  to  him  and 
to  the  Church  if  they  approach  men  in  this  spirit,  and  con- 
duct their  campaign  of  evangelism  with  this  end  in  view. 

Ill 

If  Church  and  preacher  had  always  labored  in  this 
spirit,  does  anybody  believe  it  possible  that  the  working 
classes  could  have  become  so  alienated  from  the  Church 
as  everybody  knows  them  to  be  to-day  ?  Why  has  the 
proletariat  come  to  believe  that  the  Church  is  not  its 
friend,  but  its  foe  ?  It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  working 
people  of  all  nominally  Christian  countries  have  become 
alienated  from  the  Church,  and  the  religion  proclaimed 
and  practised  by  the  Church.  This  is  as  true  of  Protes- 
tant Germany  and  England  ^  as  of  Catholic  France  and 
Italy.  In  the  United  States  it  is  httle  better.  The  gen- 
eral growth  of  materialism  and  irreligion  will  account  for 
some  of  this  alienation,  but  the  strongest  influence  is 
undoubtedly  the  growing  conviction  of  the  workers  that 
the  Church  is  cither  indifferent  or  hostile  to  their  interests. 
Accordingly,  their  attitude  is  rapidly  changing  from  one 
of  indifference  to  open  hostility. 

'  English  Socialism  is  not  entirely  anti-Christian,  however.  The  dele- 
gation of  the  English  Labor  Party  that  visited  France  and  Belgium  in 
the  summer  of  1910,  three  hundred  strong,  bore  banners  on  which  was 
inscribed:  "We  represent  500,000  English  workpeople.  One  for  all  and 
all  for  one.  We  proclaim  the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  human  brotherhood. 
Jesus  Christ,  the  social  Reformer,  leads  and  inspires  us." 

2K 


498  SOCI.\LISM  AND   THE   ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

The  president  of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor 
not  long  ago  said  :  "My  associates  have  come  to  look  upon 
the  church  and  the  ministry  as  the  apologists  and  de- 
fenders of  the  wrong  committed  against  the  interests  of 
the  people.  .  .  .  They  use  their  exalted  positions  to 
discourage  and  discountenance  all  practical  efforts  of  the 
toilers  to  lift  themselves  out  of  the  slough  of  despondence 
and  despair."  A  labor  leader  recently  said,  "The  Amer- 
ican working-man  hates  the  very  shadow  that  the  spire  of 
the  village  church  casts  across  his  pathway."  From  still 
another  comes  this:  "Some  complaint  has  been  made 
that  working-men  will  not  attend  the  church.  Had  the 
victim  on  the  road  to  Jericho  found  in  some  of  the  chief 
seats  of  the  synagogue  the  men  who  robbed  him  without 
mercy,  and  at  the  altar  the  priest  and  the  Levite  who 
looked  upon  him  without  pity,  doubtless  he  would  have 
gone  his  way  sorrowful."  Such  sayings  may  be  a  trifle 
bitter ;  they  may  not  be  entirely  representative ;  but  who 
shall  say  that  their  feeling  is  without  cause  ? 

It  is  easy  to  lay  the  burden  of  these  things  on  an 
abstraction,  and  say  that  "the  Church"  is  responsible; 
but  let  us  remember  that  the  Church  is  only  the  aggre- 
gate of  those  "who  profess  and  call  themselves  Chris- 
tians." Working-men  do  not  find  that  it  is  better,  as  a 
rule,  to  work  for  a  Christian  than  for  an  unbeliever ;  they 
do  not  find  that  they  get  better  goods  or  juster  weight 
or  fairer  prices  from  a  Christian  merchant  than  from 
a  heathen  Chinee.  An  orthodox  church-member  is  as 
likely  as  any  other  man,  when  at  the  head  of  a  corpora- 
tion, to  maintain  company  stores  that  rob  his  workmen, 
to  resist  just  demands  for  higher  wages,  better  hours,  and 
more  perfect  sanitation.     The  presence  or  absence  of 


THE  ATTITUDE  TO  SOCIAL  QUESTIONS  499 

righteous  principles  in  a  business  seems  to  have  httle  or 
no  relation  to  the  presence  or  absence  in  it  of  "Chris- 
tians." 

The  working-man  of  to-day  cannot  see  Jesus  for  the 
press,  —  the  greed,  the  injustice,  the  oppression,  the  mis- 
ery, of  the  present  social  order,  —  and  there  is  no  syca- 
more tree  for  him  to  climb.  He  can  be  cured  of  his  in- 
difference or  hostility  to  the  Church  when  the  members  of 
Christian  churches  show  to  him  that  the  spirit  of  Jesus 
dwells  in  them,  by  living  the  Master's  life  and  doing  his 
works.  The  Church  must  let  men  see  that  it  exists  for 
the  creation  of  a  new  social  order,  a  new  earth  in  which 
righteousness  shall  dwell.  The  condition  in  which  the 
majority  of  our  kind  are  compelled  to  spend  their  lives 
cannot  fail  to  move  the  followers  of  that  Jesus  whom  the 
spectacle  of  the  social  iniquities  of  his  own  time  moved  to 
the  depths,  so  that  he  could  not  restrain  his  indignant 
rebuke  of  those  whose  selfishness  made  such  suffering 
possible,  even  inevitable.  Jesus  deliberately  turned  from 
the  ecclesiasticism  and  aristocracy  of  his  day,  and  gave  his 
hfe's  best  to  the  common  people.  If  the  world's  workers 
reject  Jesus  now,  they  reject  their  best  friend  and  hope. 

Of  course,  the  Church  protests  that  it  has  been  mis- 
understood, and  what  is  even  more  important,  that 
Christianity  has  been  misunderstood.  But  who  or  what 
is  to  tell  the  world  what  Christianity  is,  if  not  the  Church  ? 
And  could  the  Church  have  been  so  fatally  misunderstood, 
if  it  had  been  faithfully  performing  its  social  mission  and 
delivering  its  social  message  ?  The  answer  cannot  be 
refused  :  the  Church  has  not  been  faithful,  and  it  is  more 
than  time  that  it  repented  its  unfaithfulness  in  sackcloth 
and  ashes  and  began  to  bring  forth  fruits  meet  for  repent- 


500  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

ance.  It  must  make  plain  to  those  who  do  the  world's 
work  that  the  religion  of  Christ  has  not  yet  lost  its  early 
characteristic,  that  it  has  a  message  of  hope  and  cheer  for 
the  oppressed  and  the  exploited.  It  must  resist  the  in- 
sidious temptation  to  espouse  the  cause  of  the  moneyed 
class,  merely  because  it  can  thus  most  easily  assure  itself  of 
adequate  financial  support,  or  it  is  lost.  The  religion  that 
Jesus  taught  will  never  perish ;  humanity  will  ever  hun- 
ger and  thirst  for  his  message ;  men  will  always  cry  out 
for  the  living  God,  even  though,  hke  an  infant  crying  in 
the  night,  they  know  not  for  what  they  cry.  But  the 
Church,  institutional  Christianity,  has  no  such  assurance 
of  permanence ;  it  appeals  to  nothing  that  is  deathless  in 
man ;  its  existence  depends  wholly  on  its  demonstrated 
utility.  And  if  the  Church  allies  itself  with  Capitalism, 
it  will  perish  with  Capitalism  in  the  great  social  change 
that  is  surely  coming.  Men  will  turn  with  loathing  and 
disgust  from  an  institution  that  has  so  far  departed  from 
the  spirit  and  aim  of  Jesus. 

The  present  peril  of  the  Church  is  curiously  like  that 
which  befell  it  in  the  age  of  Constantine.  Again  an  alli- 
ance is  offered  it  with  all  that  is  splendid  and  powerful 
in  our  social  order.  And  we  are  already  well  on  the  way 
towards  an  acceptance  of  the  offer.  The  Church  has 
practically  consented  to  condone  and  hence  to  connive 
at  social  wrong,  provided  the  wrong-doer  will  mitigate 
the  wrong  by  a  splendid  and  ostentatious  "charity." 
Thousands  of  Christians  will  not  permit  themselves  to 
consider  the  evidence  that  proves  the  maker  of  a  great 
fortune  to  be  ethically  no  more  than  a  bandit,  the  Robin 
Hood  of  finance,  because  the  millionnaire  bandit  does  ex- 
actly what  Robin  Hood  is  said  by  tradition  to  have  done 


THE  ATTITUDE  TO  SOCIAL  QUESTIONS  501 

—  he  scatters  a  portion  of  his  unjustly  gained  wealth 
(nearly  always  an  infinitesimally  small  portion)  in  pub- 
lic charities  or  education.     He  thus  doles  out  to  the  poor 

—  the  poor  whom  he  has  made  poor  and  keeps  poor  — 
a  trifle  of  what  he  has  stolen  from  them  by  means  more 
or  less  legal,  often  so  much  "less"  that  he  is  saved  from 
punishment  only  by  pleading  the  statute  of  hmitations. 
Is  it  putting  the  thing  too  strongly  to  say  that  a  Church 
guilty  of  condoning  such  commercial  ethics  as  have 
notoriously  governed  the  accumulation  of  fortunes  great 
and  small  in  the  past  half  century,  needs  to  repent  and 
bring  forth  the  fruits  of  repentance  ?  How  can  it  other- 
wise make  good  its  claim  to  be  the  representative  on 
earth  of  the  Teacher  of  Nazareth  ? 

The  world's  workers,  now  in  large  part  estranged  from 
the  Church,  will  rally  to  the  Church  whenever  the  Church 
shows  that  it  fully  accepts  the  gospel  of  Christ,  and  is 
ready  to  apply  its  principles  to  the  facts  and  conditions  of 
present-day  Ufe.  To-day  the  Church  pardons,  if  it  does 
not  encourage,  ways  of  doing  business  totally  irrecon- 
cilable with  the  gospel  and  at  variance  with  fundamental 
instincts  of  justice.  The  Church  has  never  had,  in  all  its 
history,  a  greater  opportunity ;  the  only  thing  doubtful 
is  its  readiness  to  seize  its  opportunity  and  exploit  it  to 
the  utmost. 

At  the  same  time  another  social  problem  confronts  the 
Church  :  it  is  in  danger  of  losing  its  hold  on  the  more 
scholarly  and  thoughtful  class,  that  it  could  once  count 
upon  as  a  main  pillar.  Men  and  women  who  are  trained 
in  our  higher  schools  of  learning,  and  taught  to  use  the 
scientific  method  in  their  investigation  of  all  questions, 
to  search  fearlessly  for  the  truth  and  to  accept  nothing 


502  SOCIALISM  AND   THE   ETHICS    OF  JESUS 

on  trust  from  the  past,  find  it  a  matter  of  increasing  diffi- 
culty to  adjust  their  secular  and  their  religious  instruc- 
tion. It  is  not  only  students  in  theological  seminaries, 
but  educated  laymen  in  all  callings,  who  are  perplexed 
with  doubts  and  difficulties.  But  the  layman,  while  he 
feels  these  difficulties  as  keenly  as  the  theological  student, 
has  little  time  to  give  to  their  solution ;  he  looks  to  the 
pulpit  for  help  and  enlightenment,  and  too  often  he  looks 
in  vain.  He  asks  for  bread  and  is  given  a  stone.  The 
old  dogmas  are  pressed  upon  him,  the  old  view  of  the 
Bible  is  urged  on  him,  and  he  is  assured  that  his  doubts 
are  only  an  evidence  of  depravity,  certain  proof  that  he 
is  morally  aberrant,  for  if  he  were  ethically  right  he  would 
have  no  doubts.^ 

Why  should  preachers  wonder  if  men  trained  in  the 
modern  methods  of  thinking  and  investigation  turn  in 
weariness  and  disgust  from  such  instruction?  The 
wonder  is  that  anybody  can  be  found  to  hsten  to  it  in  this 
day  and  generation ;  yet  precisely  such  teaching  is  still 
heard  from  the  majority  of  pulpits  of  the  United  States. 
It  is  no  marvel  at  all  that  educated  laymen  are  looking 
elsewhere  than  to  Christian  ministers  for  their  religious 
instruction,  and  threaten  to  desert  our  churches  in  a  body 
unless  there  is  a  great  change  in  the  type  and  quahty  of 
instruction.  They  must  have  help  in  the  solving  of  their 
problems,  and  it  is  the  duty  of  the  preacher  to  give  them 
help.  The  demand  of  the  hour  is  for  preachers  who  are 
conscious  of  the  existence  of  problems  peculiar  to  this 
age,  who  have  themselves  encountered  these  problems 

1  "If  you  pull  up  a  doubt,  you  will  find  a  sin  at  its  root,"  said  Dwight 
L.  Moody,  and  was  quoted  with  universal  applause  by  orthodox  preachers 
and  the  orthodox  religious  press. 


THE  ATTITUDE  TO  SOCIAL  QUESTIONS  503 

and  found  a  solution  of  them,  so  far  as  they  are  solvable, 
—  preachers  who  have  learned  how  to  restate  whatever 
of  precious  truth  we  have  inherited  from  the  past  in  the 
terms  of  present-day  thought  and  experience. 

This  is  far  from  saying  that  the  preacher  ought  to  look 
with  contempt  on  the  wisdom  of  ages  gone,  or  discard 
lightly  what  has  commended  itself  as  true  to  men  of  other 
days  who  have  walked  with  God  and  proved  in  their  own 
experience  the  truth  of  his  promises.  But  we  are  not 
to  cast  our  thought  in  their  moulds,  we  are  not  to  expect 
altogether  to  duplicate  their  experiences.  Nor  is  the 
preacher  to  announce  himself  as  one  who  "knows  all 
mysteries  and  all  knowledge,"  an  Edipus  who  can  solve 
any  riddle  that  the  modern  Sphinx  may  propound.  He 
will  do  well  to  cultivate  modesty,  to  recognize  that  re- 
ligion presents  insoluble  problems ;  and  for  himself  and 
his  hearers,  fall  back  on  Bishop  Butler's  principle  that 
probabiHty  is  the  guide  of  Hfe  —  that  in  this  world  we  are 
shut  up  to  the  necessity  of  choosing,  not  a  course  that  is 
free  from  difficulties,  but  the  course  that  presents  fewest 
difficulties. 

The  estrangement  of  the  professional  classes  is  not 
entirely  the  fault  of  the  Church.  The  educated  man  is 
by  nature  and  training  a  Pharisee  and  aristocrat,  even  if 
he  come  from  the  plain  people.  This  has  been  observed 
from  the  time  of  the  Renaissance.  Scholars,  teachers, 
lawyers,  physicians,  and  even  the  clergy  easily  become 
the  champions  of  feudahstic  Capitalism,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  most  of  them  have  risen  from  the  homes  of  the 
poor.  Learning  was  once  supposed  to  be  married  to 
religion,  but  in  these  days  it  has  contracted  a  morganatic 
union  with  wealth.     It  is  the  rich  and  the  well-to-do  that 


504  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

pay  the  salaries  of  the  clergy  and  the  fees  of  lawyers  and 
doctors.  "The  ox  knoweth  his  owner  and  the  ass  his 
master's  crib." 

The  rich  and  well-to-do  demand  a  gospel  that  shall 
support  institutions  as  they  are,  that  shall  serve  as  an 
anesthetic  to  their  consciences.  They  are,  therefore, 
sturdy  upholders  of  orthodoxy  in  doctrine,  and  demand 
that  nothing  else  shall  be  proclaimed  from  the  pulpits  that 
they  subsidize.  The  result  is  the  flood  of  sermons  every 
Sunday  that  are  doing  so  much  to  make  Sunday  auto- 
mobilingand  golf  and  baseball  popular.  This  is  known  in 
the  circles  of  the  elect  as  "preaching  the  old  gospel,"  a 
holding  forth  on  doctrines  of  sin  and  atonement  and  the 
inerrancy  of  Scripture,  and  above  all,  insistence  upon 
"faith"  and  not  works  as  the  means  of  salvation,  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  themes  connected  with  men's  present  duty, 
and  the  careful  avoidance  of  anything  that  might  disturb 
confidence  in  existing  social  arrangements.  Now  it  is 
doubtless  true  that  a  preacher's  mind  must  have  a 
theology,  just  as  his  body  must  have  a  skeleton,  but  it  is 
no  more  his  business  to  exhibit  the  one  in  the  pulpit  than 
the  other. 

The  greatest  lack  in  the  preaching  of  to-day  is  reality. 
It  is  too  much  occupied  with  threshing  over  the  chaff 
of  long-past  controversies,  with  pummelling  men  of  straw, 
while  real  issues  and  dangerous  foes  go  unnoticed.  And 
reality  is  what  modern  education  teaches  men  to  see  and 
demand  everywhere.  Educated  men  may  sympathize 
with  the  preacher's  purpose ;  they  find  it  impossible  to 
tolerate  his  method.  Let  the  pulpit  grapple  bravely  with 
present  difficulties,  and  give  information  and  help  to  the 
men  and  women  who  come  to  hear,  not  for  men  and 


THE   ATTITUDE  TO  SOCIAL  QUESTIONS  505 

women  long  since  in  their  graves,  and  it  will  regain  the 
respect  of  the  educated  class.  Men  are  ready  to  give  a 
fair  hearing,  if  not  prompt  reception,  to  any  earnest  mes- 
sage that  comes  home  to  their  business  and  bosoms. 

Meanwhile  what  is  done  to  the  few  who  try  to  live  the 
life  that  Jesus  lived,  and  to  teach  again  to  this  age  what 
he  taught  to  his  own?  They  are  accounted  fools  and 
dreamers,  denounced  as  socialists  and  anarchists,  es- 
teemed to  be  the  enemies  of  God  and  man,  dangerous  to 
society,  men  to  be  shunned  and  repressed.  And  men 
are  right  in  so  treating  them,  if  to  preserve  the  existing 
order  is  the  chief  end  of  man.  For  they  follow  the  great- 
est revolutionary  that  ever  lived,  and  they  teach  a  doc- 
trine the  most  subversive  of  the  present  order  that  was 
ever  taught. 

IV 

It  follows  that  it  is  the  present  duty  of  the  Christian 
Church  and  preacher  to  leave  no  honorable  expedient 
untried  to  regain  its  hold  on  both  these  classes,  before  it  is 
too  late.  Doubtless  the  Church  might  survive  for  a  time 
without  either  the  proletariat  or  the  educated  class,  but 
what  a  Church  !  The  club  of  the  rich,  in  which  they 
would  hear  only  a  gospel  of  smooth  things  such  as  would 
not  disturb  their  consciences ;  in  which  would  also  be 
tolerated  on  an  inferior  social  footing  their  dependents 
and  on-hangers,  and  such  of  the  people  in  general  as 
carefully  train  themselves  to  look  upon  business  and  re- 
ligion as  things  quite  distinct,  and  keep  their  secular  and 
their  religious  ideas  in  separate  thought-tight  compart- 
ments of  their  brains,  and  so  are  able  to  hold  comfortably 
any  number  of  contradictory  propositions  without  per- 
ceiving any  conflict  between  them.     How  long  would  it 


506  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

be  before  the  kingdom  of  God  would  be  brought  to  its 
consummation  in  this  world  by  a  Church  like  that  ? 

There  is  but  one  way  in  which  the  Church  can  ever 
convince  the  toilers  that  it  is  their  best  friend,  and 
that  is  by  being  their  friend.  It  must  show  by  its  fruits 
that  it  exists  in  the  world  only  to  cause  the  prevalence 
of  peace  and  justice,  fraternity  and  equality,  the  Uberty 
with  which  Christ  makes  men  free  through  wilhng  bond- 
age to  one's  fellows.  The  Church  that  does  this  will  not 
have  to  complain  of  the  estrangement  of  the  proletariat. 
The  altruism  of  Jesus  and  the  altruism  of  Socialism  are 
proclaimed  in  terms  identical ;  they  profess  aims  that  are 
indistinguishable.  It  is  only  in  method  that  they  differ. 
It  is  for  the  Church  to  prove,  what  it  asserts  to  be  the 
fact,  that  Jesus  gives  to  his  followers  not  only  an  ideal, 
not  merely  an  example,  but  a  vivific  force  that  makes  the 
ideal  reahzable.  Abstract  altruism  has  never  yet  moved 
any  large  number  of  men ;  the  social  altruism  preached 
by  their  leaders  has  no  attraction  for  the  toilers.  The 
element  in  SociaHsm  that  does  appeal  to  them  is  not  al- 
truism, but  class  selfishness.  It  is  the  fundamental  error 
of  Socialism  to  assume  that  working-men  are  ethically 
superior  to  capitalists.  In  all  labor  disputes  we  hear  tales 
of  injustice  and  arrogance  on  the  one  side,  and  of  dis- 
honesty and  shirking  on  the  other,  while  each  charges  the 
other  with  bad  faith.  It  is  but  too  likely  that  the  tales 
are  all  true.  Why  should  they  not  be?  Each  side  is 
frankly  lighting  for  its  own  hand,  trying  to  get  as  much 
for  as  little  as  possible,  keenly  watchful  for  a  tactical 
error  that  will  give  an  advantage.  In  such  a  contest, 
what  becomes  of  the  spirit  of  brotherhood,  of  self-sacri- 
fice, of  love?    Either  party  would  laugh  in  the  face  of 


THE  ATTITUDE  TO  .SOCIAL  QUESTIONS  507 

one  who  spoke  such  words.  It  is  the  emptiness  of  mere 
words  for  socialists  to  prate  of  altruism  among  unregen- 
erate  men.  Only  the  spirit  of  divine  love  can  exorcise 
the  demon  of  selfishness.  It  is  still  true  that  the  name 
of  Jesus  is  the  only  name  given  under  heaven  or  among 
men,  whereby  they  can  be  saved,  for  he  alone  can  change 
men  who  hate  into  men  who  love  their  brothers. 

In  a  word,  then,  the  great  need  of  the  Church  to-day 
is  that  it  become  more  socialized  in  all  its  thinking  and 
activities.  Its  influence  ought  to  be  much  more  widely 
felt  in  the  direction  of  social  betterment.  It  is  right  to 
insist,  as  the  churches  have  always  insisted,  that  to  better 
outward  conditions  does  not  of  itself  better  man ;  but  it 
is  time  for  the  Church  also  to  recognize  that  betterment 
of  some  outward  conditions  is  an  indispensable  requisite 
to  the  betterment  of  man.  Man  needs  something  more 
than  a  spiritual  gospel,  because  man  is  something  more 
than  a  spirit  —  he  has  a  body  also,  and,  therefore,  must 
live  a  Hfe  more  or  less  material.  A  whole  gospel  will  up- 
lift the  whole  man,  and  the  whole  man  cannot  be  upKfted 
in  a  slum.  Those  activities  summed  up  in  the  phrases 
"the  institutional  Church"  and  "settlement  work"  are 
the  first  crude  attempts  of  the  churches  to  rise  to  their 
opportunities,  and  are  praiseworthy  as  first  attempts ; 
but  the  time  will  come  in  the  not  distant  future,  please 
God,  when  we  shall  look  back  with  a  smile  on  the  com- 
parative futility  of  these  beginnings.  When  the  Church 
with  her  organized  power,  when  all  Christians  with  their 
latent  enthusiasm,  shall  give  themselves  whole-heartedly 
to  this  work,  there  will  be  a  transformation  of  society 
little  short  of  marvellous. 

The  preacher  can  do  much  if  he  will  get  into  closer 


5o8  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 

personal  touch  with  the  toilers.  The  men  and  women  in 
the  factories  will  not  come  to  church,  it  is  said,  and  often 
with  truth.  But  some  ministers  have  shown  that  it  is 
possible  in  that  case  for  the  preacher  to  go  to  the  fac- 
tory workers.  Religious  services  can  often  be  arranged 
in  the  workshops  or  yards  at  the  noon  hour,  and  in  cases 
not  a  few  remarkable  results  have  followed  the  holding 
of  such  services.  Ministers  and  churches  must  learn  to 
dispense  with  some  of  their  ribbons  and  starch,  if  need  be, 
and  use  the  methods  of  the  Salvation  Army  and  other 
successful  workers  among  the  masses.  It  has  happened 
that  a  preacher  who  has  thus  come  into  close  touch  with 
the  workers  and  gained  their  confidence  because  he  has 
spoken  to  them  as  man  to  man  and  has  shown  himself 
to  be  in  feeling  and  not  merely  in  phrase  their  brother,  has 
been  able  to  act  as  arbitrator  between  them  and  their  em- 
ployers and  promote  a  peaceful  adjustment  of  difficulties, 
where  without  him  strife  and  bitterness  would  have 
resulted.  These  ought  to  be  no  sporadic  cases.  But 
no  preacher  who  is  not  a  thoroughly  manly  man,  and  does 
not  in  his  heart  of  hearts  think  of  the  manual  toiler  as 
his  brother,  should  ever  attempt  such  labors.  Working- 
men  will  be  quick  to  detect,  and  equally  promxpt  to  resent, 
the  condescending  coming  among  them  of  one  who  re- 
gards them  as  his  inferiors  and  talks  down  to  them  from 
a  lofty  height  of  superiority. 

Christian  churches  and  preachers  may  also  do  not  a 
little  to  make  Christian  sentiment  felt  in  regard  to  social 
legislation,  for  the  amelioration  of  hurtful  conditions  of 
life  and  labor.  Not  officially  as  churches  and  preachers 
often,  but  as  citizens,  voters,  and  taxpayers,  by  speech, 
writing,  petition,  private  interview,  they  may  influence 


THE  ATTITUDE  TO  SOCIAL  QUESTIONS  509 

legislators  and  the  press  regarding  the  prohibition  of  child 
labor,  better  hours  for  women  in  factories,  better  sanita- 
tion of  workshops,  more  effective  protection  against  fire, 
and  the  like.  It  has  been  bitterly  said  that  it  is  easier  to 
interest  good  Christian  women  in  a  crusade  against  the 
alleged  cruelties  of  vivisection  than  against  the  ill  treat- 
ment of  children  in  Southern  cotton  factories.  Some 
eccentric  bequests  made  by  women  in  recent  years  give 
color  to  the  accusation ;  for  certainly,  while  our  cities 
are  overrun  with  children  who  are  obviously  ragged  and 
dirty,  and  look  half  starved,  a  better  use  can  be  found  for 
surplus  money  than  founding  asylums  and  hospitals  for 
stray  cats  and  dogs. 

We  must  lay  on  the  conscience  of  Christian  philan- 
thropists the  duty  of  securkig  better  housing  for  the  poor. 
Berlin  shows  America  what  can  be  done  in  providing 
beautiful  and  sanitary  homes  for  the  working  classes  at 
reasonable  cost,  not  as  a  strictly  benevolent  enterprise, 
but  one  returning  a  fair  profit.  Many  foreign  cities  put 
to  shame  anything  American.  Indeed,  as  the  result  of 
a  pretty  wide  inspection  of  European  cities,  one  feels 
warranted  in  saying  categorically  that  nowhere  save  in 
London  may  such  wretched  slums  be  found  as  exist  in  all 
the  larger  cities  of  the  United  States.  Until  recently  it 
was  true  that  the  worst  tenements  in  New  York  were 
those  owned  by  Trinity  Church ;  and  only  a  persistent 
agitation  in  the  newspapers  and  magazines  finally  aroused 
a  sense  of  shame  in  that  rich  corporation  such  as  to  induce 
it  to  begin  a  reform.  Indeed,  its  conscience  had  to  be 
quickened  by  legal  proceedings  before  it  became  really 
active.  Many  other  tenements  in  New  York,  that  are 
to-day  a  disgrace  to  that  city,  are  owned  by  respected 


5IO  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

members  of  uptown  churches;  and,  though  a  public 
nuisance  and  a  menace  to  the  health  of  the  whole  city, 
they  are  maintained  in  their  squalor  because  they  return 
a  net  income  of  fifteen  per  cent,  while  good  uptown  prop- 
erty will  barely  net  its  owner  five.  Our  cities  will  vainly 
strive  against  the  Great  White  Plague,  while  they  suffer 
its  chief  breeding-places  to  exist  untroubled.  If  love  of 
our  neighbor  will  not  teach  us  better  conduct,  love  of 
ourselves  should. 

The  Church  must  also  convince  the  thinking  men  and 
women  that  it  is  their  friend.  This  is  the  easier  task  of 
the  two,  because  they  are  thinking  men  and  women.  It 
is  not  very  difficult  to  convince  a  thinker  that  he  can  be 
both  happier  and  more  useful  in  the  Church  than  outside. 
The  Church  needs  the  educated  sorely,  but  not  more  than 
they  need  the  Church.  The  educated  man  who  has  be- 
come impatient  with  the  Church  and  left  it  has  hardly 
paused  to  reflect  on  the  selfishness  and  ingratitude  of 
his  course.  He  has  not  remembered  that  he  would  not 
possess  his  present  enlightened  view  of  things  but  for  the 
institution  on  which  he  has  turned  his  back.  He  has 
forgotten  how  immeasurably  poorer  would  be  the  com- 
munity in  which  he  lives  if  the  Church  were  abolished. 
He  does  not  consider  what  the  Church  is  worth  to  him 
and  his  family,  as  a  conservator  of  all  that  is  best  in  our 
civilization,  not  to  say  the  chief  force  by  which  advance- 
ment in  civilization  must  be  achieved.  He  has  ignored 
the  fundamental  social  need,  as  strong  in  religion  as  else- 
where, perhaps  stronger  in  religion  than  anywhere,  so 
that  the  Church  is  absolutely  necessary  as  a  means  of 
keeping  alive  Christian  ideals.  It  is  impossible  for  the 
weak  to  retain  their  Christian  faith  and  their  Christian 


THE  ATTITUDE  TO   SOCIAL  QUESTIONS  511 

character  without  the  fellowship  of  their  kind,  and  even 
the  strong  are  made  stronger  by  fellowship. 

Whatever  of  philanthropy  there  is  in  the  world  may 
be  traced,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  the  Church,  and  usu- 
ally the  direct  connection  is  patent  and  striking.  Hos- 
pitals, asylums,  schools,  social  settlements,  temperance 
work,  rescue  work,  lodging  houses,  dispensaries,  the 
Christian  Associations  for  young  men  and  young  women 
—  would  any  of  these  exist  but  for  Christian  influences  ? 
Are  they  found  anywhere  in  the  world  where  the  Church 
has  not  preceded  them  ?  Critics  of  the  Church  should 
not  overlook  these  great  agencies,  in  their  aggregate  a 
mighty  force  for  the  amelioration  of  social  ills.  The 
Church  is  doing  less  than  her  duty,  no  doubt,  but  only 
slander  can  assert  that  she  is  doing  nothing  in  social 
service.  Moreover,  the  Church  is  the  one  institution  that 
is  striking  at  the  root  of  social  ills,  that  is  engaged  solely 
in  the  work  of  regenerating  men,  of  producing  character, 
of  inspiring  high  ethical  conduct.  Granted  that  the  work 
is  done  ineffectively;  the  Church  is  doing  it,  in  some 
sort,  and  if  it  ceases  doing  it,  there  is  no  institution  to 
take  its  place. 

The  educated  man  cannot  deny  these  things ;  the  better 
he  is  educated  the  more  he  will  be  ready  to  admit  that 
these  things  are  so.  Let  the  preacher  press  this  view  of 
the  case  on  the  mind  and  heart  of  the  educated  in  his 
community.  With  all  its  defects  and  shortcomings,  the 
Church  is  doing  for  the  educated  a  work  of  inestimable 
value,  and  they  are  gladly  availing  themselves  of  the 
fruits.  It  is,  therefore,  the  plain  duty  of  every  man  or 
woman  who  values  the  character  and  ideals  for  which  the 
Church  stands  to  support  the  Church  by  membership, 


512  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

attendance,  and  purse.  Not  to  support  it  is  the  basest 
ingratitude,  as  well  as  suicidal  selfishness.  Let  the 
preacher  urge  this  view,  and  the  educated  cannot  fail 
to  perceive  the  force  of  the  argument,  nor  in  the  end  will 
they  fail  to  acknowledge  the  obligation.  Their  selfish- 
ness is  not  deliberate,  but  unconscious. 

At  the  same  time  the  churches  and  preachers  must 
prepare  to  give  as  well  as  to  receive.  The  educated  ought 
not  to  be  expected  to  be  sohtary  in  unselfishness.  Aside 
from  the  good  they  receive  from  the  general  spirit  of 
brotherUness  and  helpfulness,  they  should  not  so  fre- 
quently be  sent  away  unfed  as  now.  The  preacher 
should  so  live  in  the  present  and  be  so  intensely  a  man  of 
his  own  day,  so  in  sympathy  with  the  thought  of  his  own 
generation,  and  so  ahve  to  its  problems,  that  he  shall  be 
both  able  and  willing  to  state  fundamental  Christian 
truth  in  accordance  with  the  science  and  philosophy  of 
this  time,  and  not  in  the  terms  of  some  age  long  past. 
Only  so  can  he  have  the  intellectual  respect  of  his  trained 
hearers,  and  bring  to  their  sorely  tried  and  troubled 
hearts  a  message  of  help  and  cheer. 


It  is  often  asserted,  by  Socialists  and  Christians  alike, 
that  SociaUsm  and  Christianity  are  incompatible. 
"Christianity  and  Sociahsm  are  diametrically  opposite 
in  method,  aims,  and  spirit,"  says  a  Christian  writer, 
and  therefore,  "the  Christian  minister  not  only  cannot 
support  it  [Socialism]  consistently,  but  cannot  even  be 
in  sympathy  with  it,  and  must  oppose  its  extension."  ^ 
But  this  is  a  conclusion  possible  only  to  those  who  use 
1  Thompson,  "The  Churches  and  the  Wage  Earners,"  p.  125. 


THE  ATTITUDE  TO   SOCIAL  QUESTIONS  513 

terms  without  defining  them.  Some  forms  of  Chris- 
tianity and  some  forms  of  Socialism  are  incompatible. 
But  Nietzsche  was  more  keen-sighted ;  he  saw  that  the 
fundamental  principles  of  Socialism  and  Christianity  are 
not  merely  compatible,  but  identical,  and  included  them 
in  a  common  condemnation  and  opposed  them  with  fierce 
and  impartial  hatred.  The  Great  Paradox  of  Jesus  is 
the  corner-stone  of  Socialism  :  "If  any  one  wishes  to  come 
after  me,  let  him  renounce  self,  and  take  up  his  cross  and 
follow  me.  For  whoever  wishes  to  save  his  life  shall  lose 
it,  but  whoever  shall  lose  his  life  for  my  sake  and  the  gos- 
pel's, the  same  shall  find  it."  The  spiritof  ministering  and 
self-sacrificing  love  is  fundamental  in  Christianity,  and 
it  is  also  what  Socialism  means  by  human  brotherhood. 
It  would  be  close  to  the  truth  to  say  that  SociaKsm  is 
more  nearly  a  reproduction  in  modern  terms  of  the  gospel 
of  Jesus  than  the  system  of  rites  and  doctrines  preached 
in  his  name  in  the  so-called  Christian  churches  of  the 
world. 

But  it  is  to  be  borne  in  mind  that,  as  the  Christianity 
taught  by  Jesus  cannot  be  identified  with  any  existing 
Church  or  creed,  so  the  essential  thing  in  SociaKsm  is 
independent  of  any  particular  economic  or  political  pro- 
gramme. The  Marxians  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding, 
it  is  not  necessary  to  belong  to  a  given  party  and  speak 
an  appointed  shibboleth,  in  order  to  be  a  socialist ;  any 
more  than  one  must  belong  to  a  particular  Church  to  be 
entitled  to  bear  the  name  of  Christian.  Both  Chris- 
tianity and  Socialism,  in  their  essence,  signify  the  com- 
mon brotherhood  of  man,  with  all  the  corollaries  of  equal 
privilege,  equal  sharing  of  all  the  common  gifts  of  the 
common  Father  in  Heaven.     But  organized  Socialism 

2  L 


SH 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  JESUS 


will  often  have  a  different  aim  from  organized  Chris- 
tianity, though  the  aims  need  not  be  incompatible. 
SociaHsm  is,  on  its  practical  side,  an  economic  scheme, 
and  is  concerned  with  environment;  Christianity,  on 
its  practical  side,  is  an  attempt  to  regenerate  man,  and 
is  concerned  with  character.  Socialism  is  in  the  main 
materiahstic,  not  excluding  spiritual  elements;  Chris- 
tianity is  mainly  spiritual,  with  a  distinctly  material 
goal.  To  recognize  these  differences  clearly  is  to  raise 
no  objection  to  either,  but  rather  to  promote  relations 
of  mutual  understanding,  sympathy,  and  cooperation. 

Socialism  touches  Christianity  at  many  points,  and 
may  well  influence  deeply  the  thinking  and  preaching  of 
a  minister  to-day.  If  he  is  alert  and  open-minded,  he 
can  hardly  fail  to  be  influenced.  Socialism  is  proclaimed 
with  an  intensity  of  faith  and  an  elevation  of  sentiment 
that  are  more  characteristic  of  rehgion  than  of  philosophy 
or  economics  —  proclaimed  as  a  new  gospel.  Good  News 
for  the  poor  and  oppressed.  It  is  a  gospel  of  universal 
peace;  it  deprecates  war  between  individuals  and  war 
between  nations.  It  is  a  gospel  of  love,  and  exhorts  men 
to  cherish  the  spirit  of  universal  brotherhood  and  to  cul- 
tivate conduct  in  accord  with  that  spirit.  It  is  a  gospel 
of  hope,  since  it  holds  out  to  mankind  the  prospect  of 
relief  from  the  burdens  of  poverty  and  disease  that  now 
bear  so  heavily  on  the  shoulders  of  the  world's  workers, 
and  promises  leisure  and  plenty  to  all.  These  are  teach- 
ings with  which  the  gospel  of  Jesus  not  only  has  no  quar- 
rel, but  with  which  it  fully  agrees  —  they  are  "spirit  of 
his  Spirit  and  flame  from  the  fire  of  his  soul." 

At  these  points,  therefore,  there  is  a  possibility  for 
SociaHsm  and  Christianity  to  become  hearty  allies,  and 


THE  ATTITUDE  TO   SOCIAL  QUESTIONS  515 

no  reason  whatever  why  they  should  be  enemies.  The 
optimism  of  Christianity  is  fully  as  great  as  that  of  So- 
cialism, and  more  intelligent,  for  it  aspires  not  only  to 
gratify  men's  physical  needs,  but 

to  fill  that  deep  desire 
The  want  that  crazed  our  brain, 
Consumed  our  soul  with  thirst  like  fire 
Immedicable  pain  — 

only,  it  denies  that  the  pain  is  immedicable.  Christian- 
ity, therefore,  can  neither  offer  nor  accept  a  compromise 
with  those  socialists  who  flatly  contradict  the  word  of 
Jesus  and  ignore  the  spiritual  need  of  man,  teaching  that 
the  food  is  more  than  the  life,  and  that  man  can  Uve 
by  bread  alone.  Many  socialists  are  misdirecting  their 
efforts  and  so  wasting  their  energies ;  they  will  accom- 
plish more  for  the  uplifting  of  mankind  when  they  shall 
succeed  in  teaching  men  to  be  less  dissatisfied  with  their 
conditions  and  more  dissatisfied  with  their  character. 

The  preacher  has  something  to  offer  the  world  that  the 
socialist  teacher  cannot  have,  a  remedy  for  social  ills  that 
will  really  cure.  For  while  the  socialistic  ideals  are  prac- 
tically those  of  early  Christianity,  Sociahsm  has  no  po- 
tency to  make  its  ideals  workable.  The  machinery  is  all 
in  place,  the  workmen  stand  ready  at  their  benches, 
but  there  is  no  power-house  —  those  who  have  planned 
the  works  have  forgotten  to  put  that  in,  and  not  a 
wheel  will  turn.  Love  of  humanity,  unless  founded  in 
love  of  God,  is  too  weak  a  motive  to  endure  the  wear 
and  tear  of  re-making  a  world.  It  is  mere  sentimen- 
tality that  will  disappear  like  the  morning  dew  at  the 
first  touch  of  suffering,  or  the  first  chance  of  selfish 
aggrandizement. 


5l6  SOCIALISM   AND  THE  ETHICS   OF  JESUS 

Socialism  and  Christianity  are  not  alternatives  between 
which  one  must  choose,  still  less  antagonists  of  which  if 
we  love  the  one  we  must  hate  the  other,  but  alhes,  since 
they  avow  the  same  essential  ethics  and  seek  in  great  part 
the  same  ends.  They  can  mutually  do  each  other  good, 
for  it  is  doubtless  true  that  Christianity  would  be  the 
better  for  being  sociaHzed,  and  it  is  certain  that  Sociahsm 
greatly  needs  to  be  spirituaHzed.  The  peril  of  Chris- 
tianity is  that  men  may  be  persuaded  to  attempt  a 
divorce  of  piety  from  social  righteousness ;  and  the  peril 
of  Sociahsm  is  a  bald,  crass,  brutal  materialism.  But 
though  at  bottom  friendly,  and  capable  of  a  close  alhance 
and  mutual  helpfulness.  Socialism  and  Christianity  can 
never  be  identified.  Christianity  stands  first  of  all  for 
the  redemption  of  the  individual,  for  his  emancipation 
from  the  slavery  of  sin  to  the  status  of  a  free  man,  for  the 
restoration  in  him  of  the  defaced  image  of  God  —  this 
as  an  indispensable  preliminary  to  a  new  social  order, 
but  certainly  issuing  in  a  new  social  order.  It  must  con- 
tinue to  insist  that  the  regeneration  of  the  individual  pre- 
cede the  regeneration  of  society ;  the  new  man  must  be 
born  or  the  new  society  can  never  be.  It  is  by  this 
renovation  of  individuals,  one  by  one,  that  society  can  be 
renovated,  and  there  is  no  hope  but  this  for  the  uplifting 
of  the  race.  But  it  may  be  gratefully  acknowledged  that 
this  work  of  indi\ddual  renovation  can  be  decidedly  pro- 
moted by  a  general  betterment  of  social  conditions ;  the 
two  hues  of  labor  are  mutually  helpful,  and  mutually 
and  continually  interact ;  and  at  that  precise  point,  there- 
fore, Christianity  and  Socialism  can  join  hands  in  com- 
mon effort. 


FOR  a'  that  and  a'  THAT, 

it's  coming  YET  FOR  a'  THAT, 

THAT  MAN  TO  MAN,  THE  WARLD  O'ER, 
SHALL  BROTHERS  BE  FOR  A'  THAT. 


INDEX 


Adulteration,  stimulated  by  competi- 
tion, 293. 

Agape,  443. 

Alcohol,  cost  of,  to  society,  319-321 ; 
effect  on  laborers,  322;  "moderate" 
use  of,  412,  413. 

Amana  colonies,  229. 

Anabaptists,  and  Socialism,  14  seq.; 
their  real  offence,  475. 

Ananias  and  Sapphira,  440. 

Anarchists,  philosophical,  166;  violent, 
168  seq. 

Anarchy,  not  Socialism,  7;  impracti- 
cable, 167;  in  Russia,  168-170;  in 
Spain,  171;  and  assassination,  172; 
common  elements  with  Christianity, 
174;  first  taught  by  Proudhon,  145 
seq.;  Bakunin's  theory  of,  152  seq.; 
Kropotkin's,  15s  seq.;  Tolstoi's,  163 
seq.;  defects  of,  165  seq.;  violent 
party  in,  264. 

Antisocial  law,  in  Germany,  97. 

Apocalypse,  and  persecution,  463. 

Arianism,  457. 

Aristocracy,  and  Socialism,  279;  influ- 
ence of,  on  theology,  476. 

Aristotle,  ethics,  351,  371;  on  love  to 
God,  353. 

Armaments,  burden  of,  433. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  on  social  inequality, 
203. 

Art,  social  significance  of,  203 ;  effect 
of  Socialism  on,  309. 

Asceticism,  Bax  on,  253 ;  antichristian, 
364,  410,  412  ;  growth  of,  470. 

Atheism,  and  Socialism,  94. 

Atonement,  Paul  on,  452,  453. 

Augustine,  his  "City  of  God,"  470; 
quoted,  489. 

5 


Auspitz,  Socialistic  community  of,  21. 
AusterUtz,    socialistic   community    of, 
18  seq. 

Baer,  President,  247. 

Bakunin,  becomes  an  anarchist,  151 ; 
his  v\Ti  tings,  152. 

Barnabas  (apostle),  440. 

Barnabas,  epistle  of,  441. 

Bax,  E.  Belfort,  210 ;  on  asceticism,  253. 

Bebel,  F.  A.,  and  German  Socialism, 
93;  on  disorder  in  Russia,  170;  on 
religion,  489. 

Begbie,  Harold,  and  "Twice  Bom 
Men,"  362,  492. 

Bellamy,  and  his  "  Looking  Backward," 
280. 

Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  253. 

Bernstein,  Dr.  Edouard,  103. 

Bismarck,  tribute  to  Lassalle,  76;  and 
State  Socialism,  91,  98. 

Blanc,  Louis,  and  State  Socialism,  64 
seq. 

Blatchford,  Robert,  and  the  Clarion, 
210,  214 ;  on  God  as  Father,  355. 

Booth,  Charles,  on  competition,  275. 

Boss,  the,  and  Socialism,  305. 

Brook  Farm,  232. 

Brotherhood,  taught  by  Jesus,  363, 
368;  shown  by  service,  366,  373, 
392,  409,  412;  Nietzsche  opposes, 
3SS ;  socialist  ideal  of,  433 ;  lost 
sight  of,  466. 

Burns,  John,  216. 

Business,  a  gamble,  273 ;  what  it  re- 
quires, 275 ;  discourages  production, 
290;  province  of  man,  327;  not 
compatible  with  ethics  of  Jesus,  378, 
416,  422. 

19 


520 


INDEX 


Calvin,  his  theology,  473,  476. 

Campbell,  R.  J.,  213. 

Canon  (N.  T.),  464. 

"Capital,"  the,  of  Marx,  112,  113,  136; 
little  effect  of  in  England,  209;  an 
article  of  faith,  219;  referred  to,  200, 
208,  211. 

Capitalism,  rise  of,  37;  growth  of,  44; 
implies  competition,  46,  272;  in 
Germany,  104;  growth  in  England, 
178  seq.;  cooperation  a  form  of,  223 ; 
nullifies  the  law,  235 ;  Christianity 
its  ally,  239,  486,  500;  its  political 
dominance,  259;  its  strength  and 
weakness,  263  seq.;  an  obstacle  to 
progress,  272;  stupidity  of,  273; 
relations  of,  to  Socialism,  278;  its 
ethics,  286;  use  of  machinery,  304; 
cause  of  political  corruption,  306, 
307;  relations  to  the  saloon,  319; 
develops  the  Trust,  49 ;  a  necessity, 
50. 

Carlyle,  his  gospel  of  work,  30;  his 
"Past  and  Present,"  igS. 

Celibacy,  of  Jesus,  392,  395 ;  approved 
by  the  Church,  394. 

Charity,  social  meaning  of,  242 ;  not 
almsgiving,  423,  524. 

Chartism,  196  seq. 

Child  labor,  186  seq.;  253,  254,  325. 

Christianity,  elements  in  common  with 
Anarchy,  174;  opposed  to  militar- 
ism, 434;  its  beginnings,  437  seq.; 
deflected  by  Paul,  445 ;  paganism 
modifies  its  doctrines,  458-460;  and 
its  institutions,  461 ;  the  final  reve- 
lation, 458;  transformation  of,  466 
seq.;  inspires  philanthropy,  571; 
compatible  with  Socialism,  512  seq. 

Christmas,  pagan  origin  of,  461. 

Christological  controversies,  458. 

Church  and  State,  Maurice  on,  201 ; 
under  Constantine,  465,  467. 

Church,  the,  and  ideal  of  Jesus,  437 ; 
Jesus  did  not  found  a,  438 ;  Paul  the 
founder  of,  439 ;  early  organization 
simple,  439;  communistic  at  Jeru- 
salem, 440;  Lucian  on  its  commun- 


ism, 441 ;  its  primitive  social  fea- 
tures, 442,  443  ;  its  transformation, 
444;  follows  Paul,  448;  substitutes 
theology  for  gospel,  449;  exalts 
theology,  456;  becomes  Catholic, 
464 ;  loses  social  ideal,  465 ;  sur- 
renders to  the  world,  466;  social 
defect  of  Roman,  468 ;  begins  to  see, 
477;  its  mission,  484  ie?. ;  estrange- 
ment of  workers  from,  407 ;  present 
peril  of,  500;  educated  classes  and 
the,  501  seq. ;  its  pressing  duty,  505 
seq. 
Civilization,  progress  of,  271 ;  and 
Capitalism,  272  ;  Socialism  its  friend, 
279;  founded  on  self-interest,  297; 
compatible  with  Socialism,  297 
seq.;  incompatible  with   militarism, 

434- 

Clarion,  newspaper,  210,  211,  214. 

Class-struggle,  the,  35,  137,  214; 
Marx  and  Kropotkin  on,  365,  385. 

Clemens  Alexandrinus,  461. 

Collectivism,  see  Socialism. 

Combination  Act,  186. 

Commune,  the  Paris,  in. 

Communism,  distinguished  from  So- 
cialism, 5 ;  a  levelling  down,  168;  at 
Jerusalem,  440 ;  and  the  family,  405. 

Commimist  Manifesto,  the,  6. 

Compensation,  socialists  on,  285 ;  and 
confiscation,  286. 

Competition,  in  theory  free,  43 ;  waste 
of,  60  seq.;  cannot  be  restored,  244; 
a  state  of  war,  272;  antisocial,  273; 
Charles  Booth  on,  275 ;  stimulates 
adulteration,  293 ;  effect  of,  on 
women,  326  ;  abolition  of,  demanded 
by  ethics,  369 ;  Huxley  on  nature's, 

370.  371. 

Constantine,  his  policy,  465,  466. 

Contract,  freedom  of,  47-49,  192. 

Cooperation  in  England,  222. 

Corinthians,  Paul's  letter  to,  453. 

Crime,  and  wages,  275;  effect  of  So- 
cialism on,  318  5ej. 

Criticism,  genuine  and  otherwise,  337, 
338. 


INDEX 


521 


Darwin,  his  theory  misunderstood,  369. 

Deacons,  origin  of,  442. 

Democracy,  theory  and  fact,  40,  235, 
256  seq. ;  a  joke  in  America,  306 ;  in 
early  Christianity,  442 ;  relations  to 
Socialism,  467. 

Densmore,  Professor,  on  woman,  328. 

Department  store,  its  economic  value, 
60. 

Diocletian,  465,  466. 

Direction,  problem  of,  54,  63,  130,  20S1 
2g6. 

Discontent,  social,  87,  271. 

Dives  and  Lazarus,  parable  of,  424. 

Divorce,  freedom  of  in  America,  239, 
397 ;  attitude  of  Socialists  to,  330 ; 
Catholic  doctrine  of,  397 ;  Protes- 
tant doctrine  of,  398;  teaching  of 
Jesus  regarding,  398  seg.;  our  prob- 
lem of,  401 ;  not  scientifically  stud- 
ied, 403. 

Easter,  pagan  features  of,  461. 
Edison,  Thomas  A.,  on  future  produc- 
tion, 290. 
Education,   Owen's  reliance  on,    190, 

379- 

Efficiency,  in  production,  290  seg.; 
the  test  of  Socialism,  292. 

Election,  Paul's  doctrine  of,  456;  Cal- 
vin's, 4V6. 

Engels,  his  work  with  Marx,  6. 

Equality,  theory  and  fact,  234  seg.; 
of  payment,  282  seg.;  of  the  sexes, 
326  seg. 

Erfurt  Congress,  the,  8. 

Ethics,  Aristotle's,  351,  371;  idealistic 
and  rationalistic  reconciled,  367 ; 
demand  aboUtion  of  competition, 
369. 

Ethics  of  Jesus,  comer  stones  of,  371 ; 
righteousness  in,  372  seg.;  inexhaust- 
ible, 390 ;  travestied,  445 ;  prac- 
ticable, 478,  479. 

Exeter,  Bishop  of,  191. 

Fabian  Society,  213. 

Factory,  beginnings  in  England,  186; 


reform  of,  64,  253;  Act  concerning, 
192. 

Faith,  in  teaching  of  Jesus,  359,  454; 
Paul  on,  454 ;  Luther's  idea  of,  474. 

Family,  the,  and  Socialism,  8,  324  seg.; 
teaching  of  Jesus  on,  391  seg.,  406; 
what  it  demands,  404;  its  present 
dangers,  405. 

Farmers  and  Socialism,  267. 

Farming,  intensive,  184. 

Fatherhood  of  God,  first  taught  by 
Jesus,  352;  Blatchford  on,  355;  an 
anthropomorphic  idea,  356;  referred 
to,  371,  372,  392,  409,  414.  416. 

Ferri,  Enrico,  284,  384. 

Feudalism,  economic  basis  of,  36. 

FUnt,  Professor,  on  poverty,  255. 

Food,  production  of,  156,  184. 

Fourier,  his  type  of  Socialism,  56  seq.; 
and  Owen,  191 ;  followers  in  America, 
231. 

Foiu-th  gospel,  historical  value  of,  352, 
36s,  401,  410,  438,  455. 

Francis  of  Assisi,  253,  418. 

Franck,  Sebastian,  22. 

"Free love,"  55,  70. 

Freedom,  theory  and  fact,  40;  impos- 
sibility of  absolute,  47  ;  of  contract, 
47,  48,  192,  204;  and  Socialism,  51; 
see  also  Liberty. 

Galatians,  Paul's  letter  to,  446,  452, 

455- 

George,  Henry,  his  single  tax,  135,  251, 
265  ;  his  campaign  for  mayor,  264. 

Germany,  Sociahsm  in,  Lassalle's  part 
in,  75,  79  seg.;  Liebknecht's,  92; 
Bebel's,  93. 

Glazier,  Bruce,  on  Socialist  ethics,  211. 

Gnosticism,  461. 

God,  Jesus  reveals,  352  seg.;  his  holy 
love,  367  seq.,  487 ;  how  he  forgives, 
45 1  >  453;  conceived  by  Paul  as  Sov- 
ereign, 452;  Luther's  idea  of,  474; 
Calvin's,  476,  Laplace  on,  489 ;  see 
also  Fatherhood. 

Godin,  and  the  community  at  Guise,  60. 

Godkin,  E.  L.,  on  laborers,  236. 


522 


INDEX 


Golden  Rule,  denied  by  competition, 
273;  an  impossible  ideal,  369,  376- 
378. 

Gompers,  Samuel,  262,  264. 

Gospel,  the  Good  News  of  Jesus,  342 
seg.;  360,  488,  496;  orthodox  con- 
tent of,  453;  kind  of,  demanded  by 
the  rich,  504. 

Government,  an  oligarchy  in  United 
States,  24s ;  " representative,  "257  ^£5. 

Guesde,  Jules,  71. 

Guise,  community  of,  60. 

Guyot,  Yves,  criticism  of  Socialism,  280. 

Hardie,  Keir,  forms  Independent  Labor 
Party,  213;  loses  seat  in  Parlia- 
ment, 215;  reply  to  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  486. 

Harmony,  Fourier's  doctrine  of,  58. 

Ilarnack,  on  Neo-Platonism  and  Chris- 
tianity, 462. 

Haymarket  outrage,  172,  264. 

Heresy,  efiect  of,  457;  the  minister's 
worst,  488. 

Holyoke,  G.  J.,  211. 

House  of  Representatives,  character  of, 

259- 
Hiibmaier,  Balthasar,  18. 
Hut,  Hans,  17. 
Huter,  Jacob,  23,  25. 
Huxley,  objection  to  Socialism,   287 ; 

on  competition  in  nature,  370,  371. 
Hyndman,  H.  M.,  210. 

Independent  Labor  Party,  213:  its 
aims  and  principles,  2 14 ;  victory  of, 
in  1906,  217. 

Individualism,  in  the  past,  39;  after 
the  Revolution,  43;  Protestantism 
overemphasizes,  345,  472;  its  error, 
420 ;  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  496. 

Initiative,  the,  249. 

Inspiration,  bearing  of  theory  of,  447. 

Insurrection,  right  of,  9,  157,  427. 

Intemperance,  effect  of  Socialism  on, 
319 ;  relation  to  poverty,  322  ;  trades 
unions  on,  323 ;  attitude  of  Jesus  to, 
411  seq. 


International  Workingmen's  Associa- 
tion, 75,  III. 

Inventions,  effect  of,  44;  Socialism 
and,  299,  302-304. 

Isis,  cult  of,  459. 

"Isms,"  Jesus  taught  no,  407  ;  not  for 
preachers,  488. 

James,  William,  on  regeneration,  381. 

Jaur&s,  71. 

Jesus,  his  ethics  not  accepted  by  Chris- 
tians, 339,  375  ;  an  Oriental  teacher, 
339 ;  did  not  teach  a  "system,"  341 ; 
his  Good  News  a  social  message,  342- 
345 ;  his  individualism,  345 ;  his 
idea  of  salvation,  social,  347,  475 ; 
opposed  privilege,  348;  advocated 
no  programme,  349;  his  ethics  not 
temporary,  350 ;  on  the  Fatherhood 
of  God,  352  seq.;  his  universalism, 
354;  his  sinlessness,  357;  his  law 
of  holy  love,  357;  his  doctrine  of 
salvation,  358  seg.;  his  summary  of 
duty,  363 ;  his  Great  Paradox,  364, 
513;  did  not  give  code,  390;  his 
idea  of  righteousness,  372;  differs 
from  other  ethical  teachers,  373; 
fulfils  the  law,  375 ;  Ws  Golden 
Rule,  376;  a  Saviour,  379;  not  a 
social  reformer,  389,  407 ;  Romanes 
on  his  teaching,  390;  his  teaching 
about  the  family,  391  seg.,  406; 
excludes  polygamy,  395 ;  on  divorce, 
397  seg. ;  his  attitude  to  slavery,  408 ; 
superiority  of,  to  Mohammed,  409; 
on  intemperance,  411;  on  wealth, 
414,  417  seg.;  on  Providence,  415; 
on  stewardship,  420;  on  the  State, 
426,  427;  on  non-resistance,  428; 
his  teaching  and  war,  431 ;  his  ideal 
and  the  Church,  437;  his  teaching 
regarding  the  kingdom,  438  seg.; 
his  teaching  the  Christian  norm,  444, 
448 ;  Paul  on  the  significance  of  the 
death  of,  450;  his  teaching  on  for- 
giveness, 45 1 ;  on  sin,  454 ;  his 
teachings  submerged,  462. 

John  (apostle),  on  drunkenness,  411. 


INDEX 


523 


Johnson,  Dr.,  agg. 

Journalism  and  Capitalism,  306 ;  effect 

of  Socialism  on,  310. 
Judaism,    differentiated    from    Chris- 

tianitj',  445. 
Justification,  Pauline  doctrine  of,  452; 

Luther's,  474. 
Justin  Martyr,  441,  457. 

Kautsky,  Karl,  on  the  Superman,  279; 
on  the  family,  324. 

Kingdom,  the,  what  Jesus  meant  by 
it,  342-345;  Peabody  on,  347;  al- 
leged apocalyptic  nature  of,  350; 
significance  of,  352;  nature  of,  438, 
466 ;  rarely  mentioned  in  the  epistles, 
439 ;  changed  conception  of,  469. 

Kingsley,  Charles,  and  Christian  So- 
cialism, 200  scq. 

Kirkup,  on  test  of  Socialism,  292. 

Kropotkin,  life  of,  154;  his  "anar- 
chistic communism,"  155  seq.;  his 
new  economics,  157 ;  agrees  with 
Marx  on  class-struggle,  385. 

Labor,  not  the  source  of  value,  118, 
123;  what  is,  124;  mental,  240,  283 ; 
payment  of,  53,  62,  66. 

Laplace,  489. 

Lassalle,  relations  to  Marx,  75;  first 
organizer  of  socialists,  75 ;  Bis- 
marck's tribute  to,  76 ;  early  train- 
ing of,  77 ;  becomes  a  socialist,  79 ; 
agreement  with  Blanc,  81,  90;  his 
death,  83;  his  "iron"  law  of  wages, 
8s  seq. 

Legalism,  374. 

Leo  XIII,  encyclical  against  Socialism, 
5,  468. 

Liberty,  and  civilization,  271;  effect  of 
Socialism  on,  312  seq.;  Cicero  on, 
313  ;  see  also  Freedom. 

Lichtenstein,  Count,  17,  18. 

Liebknecht,  William,  and  German  So- 
cialism, 92 ;  on  Socialism  and  reli- 
gion, 490. 

Life,  "eternal,"  in  the  teaching  of 
Jesus,  360. 


Literature,  encouragement  of,  300,  333. 

Love,  "holy,"  the  law  of,  357,  363. 

Lucian,  on  the  early  Christians,  441. 

Luther,  on  polygamy,  395 ;  his  re- 
ligious experience  and  its  results, 
472  seq. 

Maeterlinck,  on  the  Bee,  370. 

Mallock,  W.  H.,  his  objections  to  So- 
cialism, 281,  296. 

Malthus,  his  law  of  population,  182 
seq.;  weakness  of  his  theory,  288. 

Mammon,  what  it  is,  421;  present 
worship  of,  486. 

Manchester  school,  its  doctrine  of 
laissez  faire,  43,  65,  91,  149,  202;  of 
self-interest,  180,  205;  of  Wages 
Fund,  181;  its  pseudo-science,  ib.; 
unethical  character  of  its  doctrines, 
199;  on  automatic  distribution, 
202. 

Manichoeism,  461. 

Markham,  Edwin,  and  "The  Man  with 
the  Hoe,"  384. 

Marriage,  and  Socialism,  8,  70,  328; 
Bebel  on,  95;  Owen  on,  195;  in 
America,  239 ;  teaching  of  Jesus  on, 
392  seq. 

Marx,  Karl,  and  the  Communist  Mani- 
festo, 6;  relation  to  Lassalle,  75; 
founder  of  "scientific"  Socialism, 
109;  liis  writings,  iii;  his  defini- 
tions, 114  seq.;  his  theory  of  value, 
IIS  seq.;  definition  of  labor,  124; 
doctrine  of  surplus  value,  126  seq.; 
his  method  deductive,  134 ;  his 
provision,  136;  his  service  to  So- 
cialism, 137;  his  originality,  139; 
his  dogmatism,  141 ;  makes  few  dis- 
ciples in  England,  309;  his  theories 
modified  in  America,  240;  his  "jack- 
o'-lantern,"  2s6;  on  the  office  of  the 
socialist,  281 ;  on  compensation,  287  ; 
his  doctrine  of  the  class-struggle,  35, 
137,  214,  369,  385. 

Matthew,  gospel  of,  438. 

Maurice,  F.  D.,  and  Christian  Social- 
ism, 308. 


524 


INDEX 


Medicine,  profession  of,  209 ;  eSect  of 
Socialism  on,  308 ;  its  call  to  self- 
devotion,  309 ;  V' oltaire's  jibe  at,  403. 

Messiah,  Paul's  ideas  of,  450. 

Militarism,  crushing  civilization,  434. 

Milwaukee,  socialists  of,  266. 

Mohammed,  his  ethics,  409. 

Monachism,  Socialism  plus  piety,  441 ; 
its  ideal  and  defect,  471. 

Montanism,  461. 

Moravian  colonies,  229. 

Morris,  William,  becomes  a  socialist, 
209. 

Most,  John,  264. 

Municipal  Socialism,  in  Germany,  100; 
in  England,  221;  Nashville's  experi- 
ment in,  294. 

Nashville,  and  municipal  lighting,  294. 

Neo-Platonism,  462. 

New  Harmony,  Owen's  colony  at,  193, 
231  seq. 

New  Lanarck,  Owen's  mills  at,  187. 

Nietzsche,  on  the  Superman,  279;  his 
ethics,  368;  not  founded  on  Dar- 
winism, 369;  answered  by  Huxley, 
370,  371 ;    his  hatred  of  Socialism, 

369,  513- 

Nihilists,  r68,  169. 

Non-resistance,  teaching  of  Jesus  on, 
428;  does  not  exclude  self-protec- 
tion, 430;  Tolstoi  on,  430,  431. 

Noyes,  J.  H.,  230. 

Oligarchy,  in  Venice,  245;  judicial  in 
United  States,  258. 

Oneida  Community,  230. 

Osborne  case,  218. 

Owen,  Robert,  his  business  career,  185 ; 
religious  views,  189;  social  theories, 
190;  experiments  and  failures,  193 
seq.;  colony  in  New  Harmony,  231 
seq. 

Paganism,  effect  of,  on   Christianity, 

458  seg.;  on  institutions,  461. 
Panama  Canal,  283. 
Paradox,  the  Great,  364,  513- 


Paul,  apostle,  on  labor,  277;  on  tem- 
perance, 411;  on  civil  government, 
426;  organizer  of  the  Church,  439; 
influence  on  Christianity,  445 ; 
divergence  from  Jesus,  446,  452; 
inspiration  of,  447;  his  teaching 
supplants  gospel  of  Jesus,  448;  his 
ethics,  449,  455 ;  his  preaching  of 
the  cross,  450;  on  the  sovereignty 
of  God,  452;  preponderating  influ- 
ence of,  455 ;  Protestant  doctrine 
derived  from,  473. 

Peabody,  Dr.,  on  the  kingdom,  347. 

Peasants'  War,  16. 

Persecution,  of  Christians,  463;  effect 
on  Church,  469. 

Phalansteries,  Fourier's  scheme  of,  57 ; 
at  Guise,  62  ;  elsewhere,  233,  234. 

Pharisees,  their  errors,  359,  373,  374; 
their  questions  about  divorce,  398; 
their  artificial  code,  411;  their  trap 
for  Jesus,  426 ;  Paul  and  their  legal- 
ism, 449. 

Philanthropy,     of     Christian     origin, 

511- 
Philip,  evangelist,  442. 
Politics    and    the    workingmen,    105, 

261. 
Polygamy,    excluded    by    Jesus,    395; 

perpetuated    by    Mohammed,    409; 

Luther  on,  395. 
Post  office,   293;    its  suggestions  for 

Socialism,  296. 
Poverty,   cause  of,  45;    unnecessary, 

183;    Flint  on,  255;  connection  of, 

with    drunkenness,    322;     Christian 

attitude  towards,  423-425. 
Preacher,  function  of,  487. 
President,  how  chosen  in  United  States, 

257- 
Privilege  and  the  Revolution,  38,  40, 

52;  Jesus  against  all,  348. 
Prodigal  Son,  parable  of,  353,  354,  372, 

451- 
Product,  division  of,  53,  131,  i35.  202, 

282. 
Profit,  is  it  legitimate,  129  seq. ;  Ricardo 

on,  133- 


INDEX 


525 


Programmes :  of  Socialist  League,  209, 
210;  of  Labor  Party,  215  ;  of  English 
socialists,  219;  of  Socialism,  248; 
Jesus  advocates  no,  349. 

Prohibition,  socialists  opposed  to,  321  ; 
a  social  necessity,  323,  413. 

Property,  Proudhon  on,  147 ;  Tolstoi 
on,  163. 

Prostitution,  and  wages,  275 ;  caused 
by  poverty,  330. 

Protestantism,  exaggerates  individual- 
ism, 34S  ;  its  social  failure,  472. 

Proudhon,  P.  J.,  early  life,  145 ;  his 
principles,  146;  his  idea  of  property, 
147;  anticipates  Henry  George,  148, 

ISO- 
Providence,  Jesus  on,  415. 

Rabbinism,  and  theology  of  Paul,  445, 

449,  452- 

Rappists,  229. 

Recall,  the,  249. 

Referendum,  the,  249. 

Reform  Bill  of  1832,  195. 

Reformation,  the,  and  religious  lib- 
erty, 35 ;    fails  to  rediscover  Jesus, 

473- 

Regeneration,  Jesus  teaches  social,  a 
necessity,  319,  373,  379,  386;  Tol- 
stoi on,  381 ;  and  psychology,  492. 

Religion,  and  Socialism,  8,  239;  Karl 
Marx  and  Bebel  on,  94 ;  Liebknecht 
on,  490. 

Renaissance,  the,  and  liberty  of  thought, 

35- 
Renan  on  ideal  of  Jesus,  349. 
Rent  and  interest,  Saint-Simon  on,  54  ; 

contrary  to  the  Mosaic  Law,  422. 
Renunciation,  law  of,  365. 
Repentance,  teaching  of  Jesus  on,  358. 
Reublin,  William,  20. 
Revisionists,  the,  103. 
Revolution,  in  France,  52;    effect  on 

liberty,   35,   40,   43 ;   lessons  of,   to 

America,  237. 
Revolutionary  Socialist  Party,  204. 
Roebuck,  J.  A.,  276. 
Romanes  on  teaching  of  Jesus,  390. 


Romans,  Paul's  letter  to,  453. 

Rousseau  and  the  "social  contract," 
190. 

Ruskin,  "life  more  than  meat,"  30; 
writer  on  art,  203 ;  studies  eco- 
nomics, 204;  theory  of  wealth,  42, 
205,  278;  his  practical  proposals,  206. 

Russia,  anarchy  in,  169,  170. 

Sacerdotalism,  significance  of,  467. 

Saint-Simon,  his  theories,  52  seg. 

Salvation,  a  social  idea,  in  teaching  of 
Jesus,  347;  nature  of,  358-359; 
Luther's  idea  of,  474. 

Schmiedel,  on  criticism,  338. 

Senate  of  United  States,  the,  not  repre- 
sentative, 258. 

Serfdom,  37  ;  economic,  47. 

Sermon  on  the  Mount,  quoted,  361, 
414,  415;  righteousness  in,  372; 
professed  by  some  as  their  religion, 

375- 

Settlement  work,  207,  208. 

Shakers,  229. 

Shaw,  G.  B.,  213. 

Sherman  law,  244. 

Sin,  Paul's  idea  of,  452 ;  Jesus  and  the 
remedy  for,  452,  454. 

Single  tax,  251. 

Slavery,  origin  of,  36;  modified  into 
serfdom,  37;  economic,  41;  com- 
pared to  industrialism,  274 ;  atti- 
tude of  Jesus  to,  408 ;  of  Mohammed, 
409. 

Smith,  Adam,  his  theory  of  value,  140; 
on  government,  149;  his  economic 
system,  180. 

Social  Democratic  Federation,  209. 

Social  Democratic  Party  (Germany), 
strength  of,  98;  organization,  loi. 

Socialism,  a  philosophy,  3  ;  and  evolu- 
tion, 4 ;  not  communism,  5 ;  not 
Anarchy,  7  ;  Herbert  Spencer  on,  7, 
312;  not  hostile  to  the  family,  8; 
among  Anabaptists,  14  seg.,  475  ; 
at  Austcrlitz,  18;  at  Auspitz,  21; 
lessons  of  the  early,  26  srg.;  ques- 
tion of  feasibility,  27  ;  its  philosophy 


526 


INDEX 


of  history,  35  seq.;   relation  to  the 
Trusts,   40  seq.;    and  freedom,   51, 
312  seq.;   Saint-Simon's  theories  of, 
52  seq.;  Fourier's,  56  seq.;   Blanc's, 
64    seq.;     its    abuse    of    deductive 
method,  69 ;   its  strength  in  France, 
71;    Lassalle's  theories  of,  75  seq.; 
laws     against,    in     Germany,     97; 
strength,    98 ;     organization,     loi ; 
Marx    and    "scientific,"    109;     its 
basis  ethical,  135;    economic  possi- 
bility of,  150;    affinities  with  anar- 
chy,   15s   seq.,    173;   differences  of, 
from  Anarchy,   173;    beginnings  in 
England,  177;  Owen's  contributions 
to,  i8s  seq.;  Ruskin's  programme  of, 
206 ;  recent  progress  of,  in  organiza- 
tion, 213  seq.;  development  of,  slow 
in  America,  227  ;    Moravian  experi- 
ments in,  228;    other  early  experi- 
ments in,  229  seq.;  real  beginning  of, 
234;    type  of   American,    239;    its 
fiscal  scheme,  250 ;   its  organization, 
Zti  seq.;  its  political  gains,  265;  its 
strength  in  cities,  266;  hterature  of, 
266;    relation   to  farmers,  267;    its 
future,  268;  its  scientific  ideal,  273; 
its  economic  goal,   277;    two  prin- 
ciples of,   277  seq.;    called  imprac- 
ticable, 280  seq.;  its  theory  of  divi- 
sion of  product,  282  seq.;    of  com- 
pensation, 285  seq.;  economic  possi- 
bility of,  287  seq.;  superior  efficiency 
of,   290  seq.;    versus  private  enter- 
prise, 293  seq.;  and  self-interest,  297 ; 
motives  to  which  it   appeals,    299; 
and  the  army,   300;    and  political 
corruption,  305;    its  effect  on  pro- 
fessions, 308  seq.;   on  Liberty,  312 
seq.;    on   crime,    318   seq.;  on   the 
family,  324  seq.;  on  "society,"  331 ; 
its  common  ground  with  Christian- 
ity, 379,  386,  512  seq.;  in  contrast  to 
the   spirit   of   Jesus,    380   seq.;    its 
method  illusory,  383;    its  material- 
ism, 384;  in  the  Jewish  system,  422  ; 
its  relation  to  monachism,  441 ;    to 
democracy,  467. 


Social  Labor   Federation,   its  intoler- 
ance, 219. 
Socialist  Labor  Party  (United  States), 

261,  264,  265. 
Socialist  League,  209. 
SociaUsts,  their  lack  of  agreement,  102, 

280,  305. 
"Society,"  effect  of  Socialism  on,  331. 
Spargo,  on  marriage,  8;  on  value,  116; 
on  mental  labor,  126;    on  compen- 
sation, 285. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  on  Socialism,  7,312, 

376. 
Standard  Oil,  243. 

State  Socialism,  Blanc's  theory  of,  65 ; 
Lassalle's,  81,  91;   in  Germany,  98; 
has  no  terrors  for  workers,  314. 
Stewardship,  teaching  of  Jesus  on,  420 

seq. 
Strikes,  effect  of,  181,  262. 
Stuttgart  Congress,  214. 
Suffrage,  in  Germany,  83. 
Supreme  Court,  an  oligarchy,  257. 
Syncretism,      modifies      Christianity, 
4SQ- 

Taff  Vale  decision,  216. 
Taxation,  sociaUst  theory  of,  250  seq. 
Tennyson,  misinterprets  Darwin,  369. 
Thackeray,  and  Ruskin,  204. 
Theology,  Paul's,  449  seq.;  influence  of 

syncretism  on,  460;    Calvin's,  473, 

476. 
Thrift,  no  remedy  for  social  ills,  45,  256, 

275- 

Tolstoi,  his  literary  career,  158-160; 
his  conversion,  161  seq.;  on  property, 
163  ;  on  money,  164;  his  merit  and 
demerit,  365  ;  on  regeneration,  381 ; 
on  charity,  423;  on  non-resistance, 
430,  431 ;  on  the  Church,  467. 

Toynbee  Hall,  207. 

Trades  Disputes  Bill,  217. 

Trades  Union  Act,  218. 

Trades  unions,  in  England,  216; 
American,  and  Socialism,  262;  and 
wages,  291 ;   and  temperance,  323. 

Treason  Felony  Act,  212. 


INDEX 


527 


Trust,  its  evolution,  49,  295  ;  substitute 
for,  in  Germany,  104;  hostility  to, 
179;  the  Meat,  246;  attitude  of 
socialists  towards,  243 ;  and  the 
tariS,  251;  and  economies  in  produc- 
tion, 292. 

Utopias,  63,  69,  104,  165,  241,  281, 
362. 

Value,  relative,  not  absolute,  85 ; 
Marx's  theory  of,  115  seq.;  applied  to 
land,  116;  Ruskin's  idea  of,  122; 
Adam  Smith  on,  140. 

Venice,  oligarchy  of,  243. 

Virgin,  worship  of,  459. 

X'oltaire,  on  medicine,  403 ;  his  pre- 
diction, 489. 

Wages,  Lassalle's  iron  law  of,  85  seq.; 
Ruskin  on,  122  ;  fund  for,  181 ;  and 
prostitution,  275;  and  crime,  ib.; 
and  trades  unions,  291. 

War,  teaching  of  Jesus  on,  15,  431 ; 
Peasants',  16;  attitude  of  Socialism 
towards,  252,  433;  private,  272. 


Ward,  Lester  F.,  304. 

Wealth,  Ruskin  on,  42,  205  ;  and  mor- 
als, 67;  Marx's  definition  of,  114; 
outstripping  population,  184;  dis- 
tribution of,  202,  282;  social  sig- 
nificance of,  272,  278;  production  of, 
in  United  States,  289 ;  Edison  on, 
290;  efficiencj^  and,  291 ;  economies 
in  production  of,  292 ;  and  self- 
interest,  297  seq.,  305  ;  why  valued, 
298;  teaching  of  Jesus  on,  414,  417 
seq. 

Webb,  Sidney,  213. 

Wells,  H.  G.,  213  ;  on  the  family,  324. 

Widemann,  Jacob,  his  socialistic  views, 
16-18,  20 ;  his  failure  as  a  leader,  23. 

Women,  emancipation  of,  55 ;  status 
as  affected  by  Socialism,  326;  her 
sex  function,  327;  Densmore  on, 
32S;   effect  of  economic  equality  on, 

329- 
Work,  necessity  of,  277,  301. 
Working-men's  party,  261. 
Workmen's  Compensation  Act,  218. 

Zoar,  229. 


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"  Shows  such  sanity,  such  breadth  and  tolerance  of  mind,  and  such 
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make  it  a  book  which  no  one  can  afford  to  miss."  —  New  York  Times. 

Addams  —  A   New   Conscience  and  An  Ancient  Evil.     By  Jane 
Addams. 

"  A  clear,  sane,  and  frank  discussion  of  a  problem  in  civilized 
society  of  the  greatest  importance." 

Bailey  —  The  Country  Life  Movement  in  the  United  States.     By 
L.  H.  Bailey. 

"...  clearly  thought  out,  admirably  written,  and  always  stimu- 
lating in  its  generalization  and  in  the  perspectives  it  opens."  — 
Philadelphia  Press. 

Bailey  and  Hunn —  The  Practical  Garden  Book.     By  L.  H.  Bailey 
AND  C.  E.  Hunn. 

"  Presents  only  those  facts  that  have  been  proved  by  experience, 
and  which  are  most  capable  of  application  on  the  farm."  —  Los 
Angeles  Express. 

Campbell  —  The  New  Theology.     By  R.  J.  Campbell. 

"  A  fmc  contribution  to  the  better  thought  of  our  times  written  in 
the  spirit  of  the  Master."  —  St.  Paul  Dispatch. 

Clark  —  The  Care  of  a  House.     By  T.  M.  Clark. 

"  If  the  average  man  knew  one-ninth  of  what  Mr.  Clark  tells  him 
in  this  book,  he  would  be  able  to  save  money  every  year  on  repairs, 
etc."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

3 


Conyngton  —  How  to  Help:  A  Manual  of  Practical  Charity.     By 

Mary  Conyngton. 

"  An  exceedingly  comprehensive  work  witii  chapters  on  the  home- 
less man  and  woman,  care  of  needy  families,  and  the  discussions  of 
the  problems  of  child  labor." 

Coolidge  —  The  United  States  as  a  World  Power.     By  Archibald 
Gary  Coolidge. 

"  A  work  of  real  distinction  .  .  .  which  moves  the  reader  to 
thought."  —  The  Nation. 

Croly —  The  Promise  of  American  Life.     By  Herbert  Croly. 

"  The  most  profound  and  illuminating  study  of  our  national  conditions 
which  has  appeared  in  many  years."  —  Theodore  Roosevelt. 


Devine  —  Misery  and  Its  Causes.     By  Edward  T.  Devine. 

"  One  rarely  comes  across  a  book  so  rich  in  every  page,  yet  so 
sound,  so  logical,  and  thorough."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

Earle  —  Home  Life  in  Colonial  Days.     By  Alice  Morse  Earle. 
"  A  book  which  throws  new  light  on  our  early  history." 

Ely  —  Evolution  of  Industrial  Society.     By  Richard  T.  Ely. 

"  The  benefit  of  competition  and  the  improvement  of  the  race, 
municipal  ownership,  and  concentration  of  wealth  are  treated  in  a 
sane,  helpful,  and  interesting  manner."  —  Philadelphia  Telegraph. 

Ely  —  Monopolies  and  Trusts.     By  Richard  T.  Ely. 

"  The  evils  of  monopoly  are  plainly  stated,  and  remedies  are  pro- 
posed. This  book  should  be  a  help  to  every  man  in  active  business 
life."  —  Baltimore  Sun. 

French  —  How  to  Grow  Vegetables.     By  Allen  French. 

I'  "  Particularly  valuable  to  a  beginner  in  vegetable  gardening,  giving 
not  only  a  convenient  and  reliable  planting-table,  but  giving  particu- 
lar attention  to  the  culture  of  the  vegetables."  —  Suburban  Life. 

Goodyear  —  Renaissance  and  Modern  Art.     W.  H.  Goodyear. 
"  A  thorough  and  scholarly  interpretation  of  artistic  development." 

Hapgood  —  Abraham  Lincoln :  The  Man  of  the  People.     By  Norman 
Hapgood. 

"  A  life  of  Lincoln  that  has  never  been  surpassed  in  vividness, 
compactness,  and  homelike  reality."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

Haultain  —  The  Mystery  of  Golf.     By  Arnold  Haultain. 

"  It  is  more  than  a  golf  book.  There  is  interwoven  with  it  a  play 
of  mild  philosophy  and  of  pointed  wit."  —  Boston  Globe. 

4 


Heam  —  Japan:  An  Attempt  at  Interpretation.  By  Lafcadio 
Hearn. 
"  A  thousand  books  have  been  written  about  Japan,  but  this  one 
is  one  of  the  rarely  precious  volumes  which  opens  the  door  to  an 
intimate  acquaintance  with  the  wonderful  people  who  command  the 
attention  of  the  world  to-day."  —  Boston  Herald. 

Hillis  —  The    Quest   of   Happiness.     By   Rev.    Newell   Dwight 

HiLLIS. 

"  Its  whole  tone  andspirit  isof  asane,  healthy  optimism." —  Phila- 
delphia Telegraph. 

Hillquit —  Socialism  in  Theory  and  Practice.    By  Morris  Hillquit. 
"  .\n  interesting  historical  sketch  of  the  movement."  —  Newark 
Evening  News. 

Hodges  —  Everyman's  Religion.     By  George  Hodges. 

"  Religion  to-day  is  preeminently  ethical  and  social,  and  such  is 
the  religion  so  ably  and  attractively  set  forth  in  these  pages."  — 
Boston  Herald. 

Home  —  David  Livingstone.     By  Silvester  C.  Horne. 

The  centenary  edition  of  this  popular  work.  A  clear,  simple, 
narrative  biography  of  the  great  missionary,  explorer,  and  scientist. 

Hunter  —  Poverty.     By  Robert  Hunter. 

"  Mr.  Hunter's  book  is  at  once  sympathetic  and  scientific.  He 
brings  to  the  task  a  store  of  practical  experience  in  settlement  work 
gathered  in  many  parts  of  the  country."  —  Boston  Transcript. 

Hunter  —  Socialists  at  Work.     By  Robert  Hunter. 

"  .\  vivid,  running  characterization  of  the  foremost  personalities 
in  the  Socialist  movement  throughout  the  world."  —  Review  of 
Reviews. 

Jefferson — The  Building  of  the  Church.    By  Charles  E.  Jefferson. 
"  .\  book  that  should  be  read  by  every  minister." 

King  —  The  Ethics  of  Jesus.     By  Henry  Churchill  King. 

"  I  know  no  other  study  of  the  ethical  teaching  of  Jesus  so  scholarly* 
so  careful,  clear,  and  compact  as  this."  —  G.  H.  Palmer,  Harvard 

University. 

King  —  The    Laws    of    Friendship  —  Human    and     Divine.     By 

Henry  Chukc  hill  Kino. 

"  This  book  is  full  of  sermon  themes  and  thought-inspiring  sen- 
tences worthy  of  beinq  made  mottoes  for  conduct."  —  Chicago 
Tribune. 


King  —  Rational  Living.     By  Henry  Churchill  King. 

"  An  able  conspectus  of  modern  psychological  investigation, 
viewed  from  the  Christian  standpoint."  —  Philadelphia  Public 
Ledger. 

London  —  The  War  of  the  Classes.     By  Jack  London. 

"  Mr.  London's  book  is  thoroughly  interesting,  and  his  point  of 
view  is  very  different  from  that  of  the  closest  theorist."  —  Springfield 
Republican. 

London  —  Revolution  and  Other  Essays.     By  Jack  London. 
"  Vigorous,  socialistic  essays,  animating  and  insistent." 

Lyon  —  How  to  Keep  Bees  for  Profit.     By  Everett  D.  Lyon. 

"  A  book  which  gives  an  insight  into  the  life  history  of  the  bee 
family,  as  well  as  telling  the  novice  how  to  start  an  apiary  and  care 
for  it."  —  Country  Life  in  America. 

McLennan —  A  Manual  of  Practical  Farming.    By  John  McLennan. 

"  The  author  has  placed  before  the  reader  in  the  simplest  terms  a 
means  of  assistance  in  the  ordinary  problems  of  farming."  — 
National  Nurseryman. 

Mabie  —  William  Shakespeare:  Poet,  Dramatist,  and  Man.     By 

Hamilton  W.  Mabie. 

"  It  is  rather  an  interpretation  than  a  record." —  Chicago  Standard. 

Mahaffy  —  Rambles  and  Studies  in  Greece.     By  J.  P.  Mahaffy. 

"  To  the  intelligent  traveler  and  lover  of  Greece  this  volume  will 
prove  a  most  sympathetic  guide  and  companion." 

Mathews  —  The  Church  and  the  Changing  Order.     By  Shailer 

Mathews. 

"  The  book  throughout  is  characterized  by  good  sense  and  restraint 
...  A  notable  book  and  one  that  every  Christian  may  read  with 
profit."  —  The  Living  Church. 

Mathews  —  The    Gospel    and    the    Modem    Man.     By    Shailer 
Mathews. 
"  A  succinct  statement  of  the  essentials  of  the  New  Testament." 

—  Service. 

Nearing  —  Wages  in  the  United  States.     By  Scott  Nearing. 

"  The  book  is  valuable  for  anybody  interested  in  the  main  question 
of  the  day  —  the  labor  question." 

Patten  —  The  Social  Basis  of  Religion.     By  Simon  N.  Patten. 
"  A  work  of  substantial  value."  —  Continent. 

6 


Peabody  —  The  Approach  to  the  Social   Question.     By  Francis 
Greenwood  Peabody. 
"  This  book  is  at  once  the  most  delightful,  persuasive,  and  saga- 
cious contribution  to  the  subject."  —  Louisville  Courier- J ottrnal. 

Pierce  —  The  Tariff  and  the  Trusts.     By  Franklin  Pierce. 

"An  excellent  campaign  document  for  a  non-protectionist."  — 
Independent. 

Rauschenbusch  —  Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis.     By  Walter 
Rauschenbusch. 
"  It  is  a  book  to  like,  to  learn  from,  and  to  be  charmed  with."  — 
New   York  Times. 

Riis  —  The  Making  of  an  American.     By  Jacob  Riis. 

"  Its  romance  and  vivid  incident  make  it  as  varied  and  delightful 

as  any  romance." —  Publisher's  Weekly. 

Riis  —  Theodore  Roosevelt,  the  Citizen.     By  Jacob  Riis. 

"  A  refreshing  and  stimulating  picture."  —  New   York  Tribune. 

Ryan  —  A  Living  Wage;  Its  Ethical  and  Economic  Aspects.     By 
Rev.  J.  A.  Ryan. 
"  The  most  judicious  and  balanced  discussion  at  the  disposal  of  the 
general  reader."  —  World  To-day. 

Scott  —  Increasing  Human  Efficiency  in  Business.     By  Walter 
Dill  Scott. 
"  An  important  contribution  to  the  literature  of  business  psy- 
chology."—  The  American  Banker. 

St.  Maur  —  The  Earth's  Bounty.     By  Kate  V.  St.  Maur. 
"  Practical  ideas  about  the  farm  and  garden." 

St.  Maur  —  A  Self-supporting  Home.     By  Kate  V.  St.  Maur. 

"  Each  chapter  is  the  detailed  account  of  all  the  work  necessary 
for  one  month  —  in  the  vegetable  garden,  among  the  small  fruits, 
with  the  fowls,  guineas,  rabbits,  and  in  every  branch  of  husbandry 
to  be  met  with  on  the  small  farm."  —  Louisville  Courier-Journal. 

Sherman  —  What  is  Shakespeare?     By  L.  A.  Sherman. 

"  Emphatically  a  work  without  which  the  library  of  the  Shake- 
speare student  will  be  incomplete."  —  Daily  Telegram. 

Sidgwick  —  Home  Life  in  Germany.     By  A.  Sidgwick. 

"  A  vivid  picture  of  social  life  and  customs  in  Germany  to-day." 

Simons  —  Social  Forces  in  American  History.     By  A.  W.  Simons. 
"  A  forceful  interpretation  of  events  in  the  light  of  economics." 

7 


Smith  —  The  Spirit  of  American  Govermnent.     By  J.  Allen  Smith. 
"  Not  since  Bryce's  '  American  Commonwealth  '  has  a  book  been 
produced  which  deals  so  searchingly   with  American  political  in- 
stitutions and  their  history."  —  New    York  Evening  Telegram. 

Spargo  —  Socialism.     By  John  Spargo. 

"  One  of  the  ablest  expositions  of  Socialism  that  has  ever  been 
written."  —  New  York  Evening  Call. 

Tarbell  —  History  of  Greek  Art.     By  T.  B.  Tarbell. 

"  A  sympathetic  and  understanding  conception  of  the  golden  age 
of  art." 

Trask  —  In  the  Vanguard.     By  Katrina  Trask. 

"  Katrina  Trask  has  written  a  book  —  in  many  respects  a  won- 
derful book  —  a  story  that  should  take  its  place  among  the  classics." 
—  Brooklyn  Daily  Eagle. 

Valentine  -  How  to  Keep  Hens  for  Profit.     By  C.  S.  Valentine. 

"  Beginners  and  seasoned  poultrymen  will  find  in  it  much  of 
value."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

Van  Dyke  —  The  Gospel  for  a  World  of  Sin.     By   Henry  Van 

Dyke. 
"  One  of  the  basic  books  of  true  Christian  thought  of  to-day  and  of 
all  times."  —  Boston  Courier. 

Van  Dyke  —  The  Spirit  of  America.     By  Henry  Van  Dyke. 

"  Undoubtedly  the  most  notable  interpretation  in  years  of  the  real 
America.  It  compares  favorably  with  Bryce's  '  American  Com- 
monwealth.' "  —  Philadelphia  Press. 

Veblen  —  The  Theory  of  the  Leisure  Class.     By  Thorstein  B. 
Veblen. 
"  The  most  valuable  recent  contribution  to  the  elucidation  of  this 
subject."  —  London  Times. 

Vedder — Socialism   and   the    Ethics    of    Jesus.     By    Henry    C. 
Vedder. 
"  A  timely  discussion  of  a  popular  theme." —  New    York  Post. 

Walling  —  Socialism  as  it  Is.    By  William  English  Walling. 

"...  the  best  book  on  Socialism  by  any  American,  if  not  the  best 
book  on  Socialism  in  the  English  language."  —  Boston  Herald. 

Wells  —  New  Worlds  for  Old.     By  H.  G .  Wells. 

"  As  a  presentation  of  Socialistic  thought  as  it  is  working  to-day, 
this  is  the  most  judicious  and  balanced  discussion  at  the  disposal  of 
the  general  reader."  —  World  To-day. 

8 


Weyl  —  The  New  Democracy.     By  Walter  E.  Weyl. 

"  The  best  and  most  comprehensive  survey  of  the  general  social 
and  political  status  and  prospects  that  has  been  published  of  late 
years." 

White  —  The  Old  Order  Changeth.     By  William  Allen  White. 

'■  The  present  status  of  society  in  America.  An  excellent  antidote 
to  the  pessimism  of  modern  writers  on  our  social  system."  — 
Baltimore  Sun. 


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Allen  —  A  Kentucky  Cardinal.     By  James  Lane  Allen. 

"  A  narrative,  told  with  naive  simplicity,  of  how  a  man  who  was 
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Allen  —  The  Reign  of  Law.     A  Tale  of  the  Kentucky  Hempfields. 
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"Mr.  Allen  has  style  as  original  and  almost  as  perfectly  finished  as 
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many  novels  of  the  period."  —  San  Francisco  Chronicle. 

Atherton  —  Patience  Sparhawk.     By  Gertrude  Atherton. 

"  One  of  the  most  interesting  works  of  the  foremost  American 
novelist." 

Child  —  Jim  Hands.     By  Richard  Washburn  Child. 

"  A  big,  simple,  leisurely  moving  chronicle  of  life.  Commands  the 
profoundest  respect  and  admiration.  Jim  is  a  real  man,  sound  and 
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Crawford  —  The  Heart  of  Rome.     By  Marion  Crawford. 
"  A  story  of  underground  mystery." 

Crawford  —  Fair  Margaret:  A  Portrait.     By  Marion  Crawford. 

"  A  story  of  modern  life  in  Italy,  visualizing  the  country  and  its 
people,  and  warm  with  the  red  blood  of  romance  and  melodrama."  — 
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Davis  —  A  Friend  of  Caesar.     By  William  Stearns  Davis. 

"  There  are  many  incidents  so  vivid,  so  brilliant,  that  they  fix  them- 
selves in  the  memory." —  Nancy  Huston  Banks  in  The  Bookman. 

Drummond  —  The  Justice  of  the  King.     By  Hamilton  Drummond. 
"  Read  the  story  for  the  sake  of  the  living,  breathing  people,  the 
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King."  —  Chicago  Record-Herald. 

lO 


Elizabeth  and  Her  Gennan  Garden. 

"  It  is  full  of  nature  in  many  phases  —  of  breeze  and  sunshine,  of 
the  glory  of  the  land,  and  the  sheer  joy  of  living."  —  New  York 
Times. 

Gale  —  Loves  of  Pelleas  and  Etarre.     By  Zona  Gale. 

"...  full  of  fresh  feeling  and  grace  of  style,  a  draught  from  the 
fountain  of  youth."  —  Outlook. 

Herrick  —  The  Common  Lot.     By  Robert  Herrick. 

"  A  story  of  present-day  life,  intensely  real  in  its  picture  of  a  young 
architect  whose  ideals  in  the  beginning  were,  at  their  highest,  ajsthetic 
rather  than  spiritual.     It  is  an  unusual  novel  of  great  interest." 

London  —  Adventtire.     By  Jack  London. 

"  No  reader  of  Jack  London's  stories  need  be  told  that  this  abounds 
with  romantic  and  dramatic  incident."  —  Los  Angeles  Tribune. 

London  —  Burning  Daylight.     By  Jack  London. 

"  Jack  London  has  outdone  himself  in  '  Burning  Daylight.'  "  — 
The  Springfield  Union. 

Loti  —  Disenchanted.     By  Pierre  Loti. 

"  It  gives  a  more  graphic  picture  of  the  life  of  the  rich  Turkish 
women  of  to-day  than  anything  that  has  ever  been  written."  — 
Brooklyn  Daily  Eagle. 

Lucas  —  Mr.  Ingleside.     By  E.  V.  Lucas. 

"  He  displays  himself  as  an  intellectual  and  amusing  observer  of 
life's  foibles  with  a  hero  characterized  by  inimitable  kindness  and 
humor."  —  The  Independent. 

Mason  —  The  Four  Feathers.     By  A.  E.  W.  Mason. 

"  '  The  Four  Feathers  '  is  a  first-rate  story,  with  more  legitimate 
thrills  than  any  novel  we  have  read  in  a  long  time." —  New    York 

Press. 

Norris  —  Mother.     By  Kathleen  Norris. 

"  Worth  its  weight  in  gold."  —  Catholic  Columbian. 

Oxenham  —  The  Long  Road.     By  John  Oxenham. 

"  '  The  Long  Road  '  is  a  tragic,  heart-gripping  story  of  Russian 
political  and  social  conditions."  —  The  Craftsman. 

Pryor  —  The  Colonel's  Story.     By  Mrs.  Roger  A.  Pryor. 

"  The  story  is  one  in  which  the  spirit  of  the  Old  South  figures 
largely;  adventure  and  romance  have  their  play  and  carry  the  plot 
to  a  satisfying  end." 

II 


Remington  —  Ermine  of  the  Yellowstone.     By  John  Remington. 

"  A  very  original  and  remarkable  novel  wonderful  in  its  vigor  and 
freshness." 

Roberts  —  Icings  in  Exile.     By  Charles  G.  D.  Roberts. 

"  The  author  catches  the  spirit  of  forest  and  sea  life,  and  the  reader 
comes  to  have  a  personal  love  and  knowledge  of  our  animal  friends." 
—  Boston  Globe. 

Robins  —  The  Convert.     By  Elizabeth  Robins. 

"  '  The  Convert  '  devotes  itself  to  the  exploitation  of  the  recent 
suffragist  movement  in  England.  It  is  a  book  not  easily  forgotten 
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Robins  —  A  Dark  Lantern.     By  Elizabeth  Robins. 

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Ward  —  The  History  of  David  Grieve.    By  Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward. 
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Altsheler  —  The  Horsemen  of  the  Plains.     By  Joseph  A.   Alt- 

SHELER. 

"  A  Story  of  the  West,  of  Indians,  of  scouts,  trappers,  fur  traders, 
and,  in  short,  of  everything  that  is  dear  to  the  imagination  of  a  healthy 
American  boy."  —  New    York  Sun. 

Bacon  —  While  Caroline  Was  Growing.     Bv  Josephine  Daskam 
Bacon. 
"  Only  a  genuine  lover  of  children,  and  a  keenly  sympathetic 
observer  of    human  nature,   could   have   given   us   this  book."  — 
Boston  Herald. 

X2 


Carroll- —  Alices  Adventures,  and  Through  the  Looking  Glass.     By 

Lewi3  Carroll. 
"  One  of  the  immortal  books  for  children." 

Dix —  A  Little  Captive  Lad.     By  Marie  Beulah  Dix. 

"  The  human  interest  is  strong,  and  children  are  sure  to  like  it."  — 
Washington   Times. 

Greene  —  Pickett's  Gap.     By  Homer  Greene. 

"  The  story  presents  a  picture  of  truth  and  honor  that  cannot  fail 
to  have  a  vivid  impression  upon  the  reader."  —  Toledo  Blade. 

Lucas  —  Slowcoach.     By  E.  V.  Lucas. 

"  The  record  of  an  English  family's  coaching  tour  in  a  great  old- 
fashioned  wagon.  A  charming  narrative,  as  quaint  and  original  as 
its  name."  —  Booknews  Monthly. 

Mabie  —  Book  of  Christmas.     By  H.  W.  Mabie. 

"  A  beautiful  collection  of  Christmas  verse  and  prose  in  which  all 
the  old  favorites  wiU  be  found  in  an  artistic  setting." —  The  St. 
Louis  Mirror. 

Major  —  The  Bears  of  Blue  River.     By  Charles  Major. 
"  An  exciting  story  with  all  the  thrills  the  title  implies." 

Major  —  Uncle  Tom  Andy  Bill.     By  Charles  Major. 

"  A  stirring  story  full  of  bears,  Indians,  and  hidden  treasures."  — 
Cleveland  Leader. 

Nesbit  —  The  Railway  Children.     By  E.  Nesbit. 

"  A  delightful  story  revealing  the  author's  intimate  knowledge  of 
juvenile  ways."  —  The  Nation. 

Whyte  —  The  Story  Book  Girls.     By  Christina  G.  Whyte. 

"  A  book  that  all  girls  will  read  with  delight  —  a  sweet,  wholesome 
story  of  girl  life." 

Wright  —  Dream  Fox  Story  Book.     By  Mabel  Osgood  Wright. 

"  The  whole  book  is  delicious  with  its  wise  and  kindly  humor,  its 
just  perspective  of  the  true  value  of  things." 

Wright  —  Aimt  Jimmy's  Will.     By  Mabel  Osgood  Wright. 
"  Barbara  has  written  no  more  delightful  book  than  this." 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


FEB  8    »Si 

fCB2  4RECD 

JANS  0  1952 
,JUN  7     195t 

^£6  281983 


^^%l,Ml^'^^ 


KI-X'D  ID-UHL 


QLOCT02M 


•01(1 


FonnL9 — 15m-10,'48(B1039)444 


-d  GmwQBc;:iA 


i-OS  ANGELES 
LIBRARY 


^ 


3  1158  00850  1396 


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